Just What Needs To Be Thrown Aside?
by MariaRoseSina
Summary: What is the true cost of final victory? Centered primarily on Armin, but with significant appearances by other characters as the Survey Corps and the members of the 104th confront their doubts, heal from betrayal, fight for their lives, and steel themselves for the future struggle. A series of dramatic 1-2 part stories set at various points of the manga.
1. Chapter 1: Tomorrow Will Be Fine

Everyone, this is my first fan fiction ever. I've written several short stories before, and I've toyed several times with writing novels, but I'm quite new to the fanfic world and to Attack on Titan.

Beware of manga spoilers. Also, definitely beware of feelings. This aint no romantic comedy AU—the world of canon can be sad sometimes, haha.

This is supposed to the first in what I'm hoping will be a collection of oneshots centered primarily on Armin, entitled **Just What Needs To Be Thrown Aside?** I've learned that I really care about portraying characters correctly (please leave feedback), so in a way these are a series of hopefully compelling character studies that try their best to stay true to the original material we all know and love. The first story/chapter focuses on the reactions of the former 104th trainee squad in the wake of Bertholt and Reiner's betrayal. I've always been captivated by the question of whether or not the titan shifters—Annie, Bertholt, and Reiner—can be redeemed, or whether the damage and death that they've brought about can be justified.

I'm also a fan of minor characters, so I try to throw in references to relevant ones wherever I can. I also like to fill in back stories and 'world build' a little, adding little tidbits and anecdotes that are hopefully interesting enough to be headcanon-worthy.

I.

The cold wind buffeted Armin's small frame as he made his way back to the cabin. The night was frigid, the sky dark and overcast. Glancing up past the fringe of his hood, he tracked the thick underbelly of the carpet of clouds as it soared past overhead, pushed swiftly onwards by unseen high-altitude gusts.

He wondered how few hours were required for a squadron of clouds to traverse the entirety of the remaining territory under mankind's control.

The chilly night air seemed to amplify every sound, from the crunch of Armin's military boots on the dirt path to the harsh flapping of his cloak in the breeze. He shivered, his body cooled to the core from his solitary watch from the sentry platform downhill. Only his fingers, warmed ever so slightly as they clenched the metal loop of the lantern bouncing at his side, retained any feeling. Turning his head to look back along the path, Armin could spy a twin flame glittering in the darkness. It marked Sasha's lantern where it hung from a long nail next to the flintlock musket and bow propped against the railing of the guard post.

Thrusting his left arm deeper inside the sheltering folds of his cloak, Armin suddenly recalled another dark night from what felt like a past lifetime—a midnight climb by four trainees by the light of handheld lanterns. Smells, revived by his memory, assaulted his mind—the metallic tang of the rusty boundary fence lingering upon his palms… the rich aroma of fallen needles coated in resin... They had reached a clearing overlooking the lake. Almost as if response to their gaze, the clouds had opened, spilling moonlight across the surface of the water as they looked on. He remembered a blanket of tall pines standing in unending ranks that stretched across the hills and ridges as far as the eye could see.

_Eren Jaeger, was it?_ Reiner Braun had asked.

The crunch of dirt underfoot turned to a rattle as Armin crossed the patch of gravel at the base of the cabin steps. As he set foot on the porch, Armin lifted the lamp, flicked the glass door open with his free hand, and blew out the light. The scent of burnt lamp oil fresh in his lungs, he knocked four times on the cabin door.

The harmony of voices in the room within quieted, and a chair scraped against the floor as someone rose. Armin stepped back as the door swung open and found himself looking upwards into Mikasa's familiar face. As light illuminated the porch, Armin caught the tail end of the conversation that he had just interrupted:

"—those assholes…"

"—begin to imagine… Who knows?"

The new members of Levi's special operations squad, drawn entirely from the members of the former 104th Trainee Detachment, turned their heads to greet Armin as he entered the dining room. Mikasa closed the door behind her childhood friend, stifling the frigid draft that had followed him into the building. As he lowered his hood, Armin concluded that he had a very good idea of what the group had just been discussing.

"Hey, Armin," Jean grunted from his seat by the fire.

"Cold out there, huh?" Connie exclaimed. He returned his chair to the floorboards from the angle at which he'd been reclining it a moment earlier. "Dammit, I have the watch just before sunrise, too…"

"Beg Recon Scout Blouse for her company." Levi quipped from his position at the head of the table at Jean's right. "I'm sure she wouldn't object to staying at her post a few more hours to keep you warm."

Connie flushed as he shifted his chair to one side, leaving room for Armin to occupy the stool next to him. Armin set his lantern next to the door, hung his cloak upon the wall, and stepped over to sit down at the table. "Thanks."

The soldiers seated around the table were all dressed simply, in casual civilian clothes. A couple of them-Christa and Connie-seemed to be wearing the sets of clothes they had brought to trainee camp all those years ago. Connie's shirt sleeves were now clearly too short to cover his grown arms. Christa's blouse still fit, but its rose-colored pattern had faded to a dull, bleached red.

"So, Armin," began Jean, "which betrayal shocked you more? Annie's? or Reiner and Bertholt's?"

Levi blinked and turned his uninterested gaze on the new arrival. "We were just discussing the unfortunate implications of your former squadmates' true loyalties, Artlet."

"After all, I guess, you were one of the first ones to suspect them in both cases…" Jean added.

Armin nodded. He had surmised as much. He suddenly remembered the feeling of a pair of strong hands winding a bandage tightly around his head, fastening the cloth wrappings with a firm but gentle set of motions. Suddenly tired, the boy soldier from Shiganshima leaned forward to rest his chin in his hands, elbows braced on the tabletop.

His earlier blush fading from his cheeks, Connie crossed his arms. "I still can't believe Reiner was fighting against us this entire time… and Bertholt? The Colossal Titan? If I hadn't seen them turn with my own eyes…"

At that moment, one of the pine logs burning in the hearth collapsed, sending a spray of bright embers upwards. Levi reached for the poker and pushed the two halves back into the flames.

Connie frowned. "At least Annie had the fucking decency to distance herself from us before stabbing us in the back. She never bothered to talk with us if she could help it, much less make promises or lecture us on a soldier's duty, even if she was just as black-hearted as the rest of them…" His frown deepened.

Mikasa's voice cut through the fireplace's crackle. "That doesn't make her any less guilty. She knowingly sought to capture humanity's best hope for survival, and she practically crippled our strongest military arm in the process." She threw a brief, meaningful glance at Eren.

Levi's expression darkened and his body seemed to stiffen at Mikasa's words. Armin felt cold to his core once again as he reflected on the losses suffered by the Survey Corps in just the past few months. Between the disaster of the 57th expedition beyond the walls, the costly female titan capture operation in Stohess, the unexpected fighting within Wall Rose, and the all-or-nothing battle to recapture Eren from captivity, the branch had suffered a total toll in irreplaceable casualties that it had never experienced in its entire history. The fighting-fit members of the Survey Corps with over three years of experience could now be counted with the fingers of one hand. Armin watched Eren draining his cup of coffee and reflected that by now, perhaps two thousand soldiers had bled or died to protect him. And the end of this great struggle lay nowhere in sight.

"Ymir is the first one of the bunch that I'd forgive, that's for sure," Jean grunted. "She might be a selfish psychopath who doesn't give a damn about the rest of us, but she threw her lot in with us at the castle tower, and she had no part in breaking any fucking walls."

"I'll bet she ate her fair share of humans," Eren exclaimed. "She admitted to killing one of Reiner and Bertholt's friends."

"Did she? Good riddance," Connie spat. He was drumming his fingers softly on the tabletop.

"Didn't you say she was mindless when she was a titan, Eren?" Christa suddenly asked. "I for one can't fault her for anything she did when she wasn't in control of her actions."

At the sound of her voice, nearly everyone turned to where Christa was sitting behind Connie atop a crate of provisions, her back against the cabin wall. She had spoken just a handful of times all day, and her usual bright aura had been cold and distant ever since their return from that trampled plain littered with the broken bodies of men and horses. A year ago, Armin would never have been able to imagine her pretty face with such red, tired eyes. He supposed that her new temperament was something they'd have to get used to, along with her true name.

"Ah, good point… I forgot about that," Eren said.

"She still broke her oath to the Survey Corps and to the king," Mikasa reminded them. She had remained standing after letting Armin into the cabin. "She interfered seriously with our efforts to recapture Eren, and she ultimately abandoned us to assist the Armored Titan during the last battle. She may not be humanity's enemy, but she hardly counts as our friend, and she's a mockery of what it means to be a soldier."

A memory stirred within Armin's mind. _What will you do if you're told to die?_ A question delivered half a lifetime ago from behind a spray of golden hair. _You're weak, but you have guts._ Cold fingers seemed to close around his heart.

Connie and Christa were now arguing passionately about Ymir's choices during the last expedition by the Survey Corps, though it seemed like most of the group was fairly uninterested. Armin sighed. Ymir's motivations were an enigma, but at least her actions seemed easy to predict. So long as Christa fought on humanity's side, he found it unlikely that the titan shifter would willingly back any plan to bring the walls down.

Eren had raised his voice in order to be heard above the side conversation occupying Christa and Connie's corner of the room. "I think Bertholt and Reiner are well beyond forgiveness. They've shown regret for the suffering they've caused, but that didn't stop them from breaching the gates of Trost or from taking me prisoner. They would have breached Wall Rose if I hadn't surprised them by turning into a titan." He paused, and suddenly his voice seemed softer. "That said, I don't believe that they were ever eager to drive mankind to extinction. Nor do I think they needed much convincing to leave Trost's inner gate alone…"

Armin could almost hear Bertholt's pained, strangled yell, clearly audible even from within the armored titan's fist:

"WHO DO YOU THINK ACTUALLY WANTS TO KILL PEOPLE!?"

Armin heard the sound of a saucer being pushed across the surface of the table. Somebody sniffed. Out of the corner of his eye, Armin noticed Mikasa raise her scarf over her chin and bottom lip, her gaze unfocused. It seemed as though the whole table was lost in reflection, swimming in the memories of that terrible day. He felt a ghost of the violent anguish that he'd been seized with that morning as he'd watched the jaws of the bearded titan close on his best friend, severing that outstretched arm at the elbow… The lump in his throat grew as he recalled Thomas's disbelieving expression as he vanished between an aberrant's lips, and the image of Hannah's tear-streaked face as she struggled to resuscitate Franz's lifeless form. He blinked and wiped the budding tears across the back of his hand. A quarter of their graduating class had perished before the withdrawal was complete, and a further eighth had been lost in the effort to retake the city.

Here they sat, five battles older.

"I don't understand," Jean breathed, his voice aggressive. "Couldn't they see for themselves what destroying humanity would mean? They were with us the whole time at Trost, watching whole platoons get torn apart and consumed, seeing terrified families fleeing the city, cleaning bodies off the streets and rolling them onto the funeral pyre…" The native son of Trost grasped the coffee cup before him with both hands, weaving his fingers around the ceramic vessel. "Reiner and Bertholt were there in Karanes too when we returned from our first expedition. Were they really able to endure the grief and tears of the families of the dead without wondering for even a moment whether they were on the wrong side?"

"Well, who knows what was really on their minds…" Eren said with a sigh.

Upon hearing Eren's comment, Armin spoke up for the first time that night.

"Whatever reasons they had, I'm sure they were compelling. That's almost certain."

Everyone turned to face him, surprised yet immediately attentive, and Armin felt a sudden nervousness that almost made him regret joining the conversation. He privately decided that no matter how much time passed, he would always feel half intimidated and half flattered by the value his friends placed on his thoughts and insights.

Taking a deep breath, he continued, "The reason why Reiner and Bertholt betrayed us had to have been important enough for them to follow through with it despite all their doubts, not to mention despite their friendship with us. It had to be important enough to persuade them to continue acting against humanity in the face of all the suffering and death that they've seen. If you think about it more, their goal also had to be important enough to motivate their secret village to send three children far away from home to break the walls, important enough for Annie to fight to the end and entomb herself rather than surrender, important enough for all of them to choose to kill dozens and hundreds of soldiers and innocents, and important enough for their side to oppose humanity in the first place despite the fact that normal titans are a common enemy."

Another thought suddenly occurred to Armin, and he voiced it as soon as it was fully formed. "There's this as well—whatever their reasons, it was also enough to persuade Ymir to go as far as to abandon Christa in favor of returning to assist them, even at the risk of her own life." He saw Christa reel at his words as though physically wounded by them.

"We know that none of them are cruel people at heart. If they thought protecting humanity was the right thing to do, we have to assume that they would have abandoned their mission by now." he concluded.

Armin had reached this conclusion long ago, yet his imagination had utterly failed since to arrive at an explanation that would justify the deaths of hundreds of thousands. What beliefs, what reasons could possibly be sufficient to condemn such an unimaginable number of people to even more unimaginable suffering?

"I'm not sure if that's necessarily true…" Connie began.

"Are you suggesting that we are the ones fighting on the wrong side, then?" Levi asked with a sarcastic gleam in his eyes.

Jean snorted, chuckling darkly.

"No…" Armin replied. "We may know close to nothing about Berthold and Reiner, but I know that we're fighting for humanity's future—"

"Maybe they're just insane," Eren suggested. "It's not much of a stretch…"

"Well, maybe they have family who would be held accountable for their failure—" Armin suggested, only to be cut off by a second disbelieving snort from Jean.

"That's ridiculous. Most of us have families, but I don't think any of us would be selfish enough to weigh their lives against the entirety of the human race," Jean exclaimed.

Nobody rushed to comment on Jean's assertion. The room was darker now; the flames of the hearth now danced only inches above the glowing logs. The cup of coffee that Connie had poured for Armin sat lukewarm and untouched in the center of the table. He wasn't in the mood for coffee, but he reached for it and sipped anyway, not wanting to waste any.

"Well, I mean, Mikasa, even you would make that choice, wouldn't you? Wouldn't _you_ sacrifice Eren's life to achieve victory for humankind, if you were forced to?" Jean's voice carried a hint of bitterness as he looked up from his interlocked hands at the raven-haired girl.

Mikasa's hand fell from the scarf around her neck to her side, and she looked back and forth between Jean and Eren before matching Jean's gaze once more. She cleared her throat, and her answer was loud enough to startle Armin into an involuntary shudder.

"I would. Of course I would," asserted humanity's second-deadliest soldier. Her voice was surprisingly even and confident.

"I would sacrifice all of you, and myself as well, if it were necessary to buy freedom for our kind. Without hesitation." She took a deep breath, then let out a long, lingering sigh. "It would be the end of me, though, even if I lived… The impact of such a choice would be shattering for any of us. I'm sure you can all imagine it." She moved to step around the table before settling herself back in her chair. Eren was staring at her, his expression unreadable as she seated herself next to him.

It was strange, Armin decided, that someone as strong and driven as Mikasa could coldly declare her willingness to make sacrifices, yet hesitate all the same when the moment came. Her intervention atop Wall Rose had been almost instantaneous—a thing of heartstopping martial beauty. In a fraction of the blink of an eye, her swords had been free of their sheaths, cleaving effortlessly through forearms and neck… only to stop just short of fully decapitating Reiner and Bertholt. Basic humanity, it seemed, was both sides' worst enemy. Eren had hesitated similarly as he had poised himself to rip Annie out of the female titan's neck, just as Annie herself had paused to lift Armin's hood rather than erase his body with a single swipe of her fist, just as Bertholt had exposed himself and his captive, incensed by Armin's bluff that Annie was being tortured for information. Armin thought that even Annie's decision to instruct Eren in her mysterious hand-to-hand techniques had likely been emotionally motivated—a rare moment of weakness in an otherwise perfect masquerade of cold indifference. Had the loneliness of her mission become too much to bear? In a way, she'd been the strongest of the secret titans—silent and unsmiling throughout years of solitude—yet her mere handful of lapses had been sufficient to doom her mission to failure. Perhaps, Armin pondered, it was impossible to truly erase the human factor within a soldier's soul. One could only account for its influence, and plan accordingly to minimize the consequences.

But what consequences!

"Hmph." From the head of the table, Levi chose that moment to lean forward. "If you want to win, Mikasa Ackerman, that won't do." His bangs had fallen in front of his eyes at the sudden change in posture, giving the veteran soldier an intimidating look.

"It can't be the end of you, once you make a choice like that," he continued. Suddenly, he turned his head. "Renz! Or Riess, dammit!"

Christa visibly jumped. "Y-yes, sir!?"

"Put another log on the fire, would you? One will do."

As she rose and moved behind him to kneel by the fireplace, Levi looked back down the table. He was watching Mikasa intently as he resumed speaking.

"When you sacrifice someone, you don't look back. There's no damn use agonizing over a decision you've already made. If you let it break you, then you've already wasted part of the advantage they died for." His expression somehow became several times even more serious. "Do you know how many scouts I've ordered to die?"

Armin shivered at the implications of what Levi was saying. Sure enough, a quick glance around the table revealed nothing but pairs of eyes, all suddenly wide awake at the suggestion that their leader might send them to a grisly fate without batting an eye.

"I ordered a soldier to fight a ten-meter class on foot without maneuver gear once," Levi said grimly to a shocked room. "The bastard surprised us, killing our two sentries while we were in the middle of exchanging our gas canisters. Liesel's death bought us enough time to run for the horses." He kept his narrowed eyes fixed intently on Mikasa. "I sent four recruits younger than any of you lot against a group of titans even a veteran group would have had difficulty with, in order to protect Mike's squad while they dealt with of one of those fucking crawling aberrants."

"Only one made it back," he added, briefly turning his eye on Eren. "Auruo Bossard."

Eren's eyes widened. Levi was fixing his stare on each of them in turn, as though gauging their individual reactions.

Behind Levi, Christa stood from her place by the fire with an expression of shock on her face. Already, the flames were burning brighter and leaping higher, silhouetting the two of them against the orange glow. Across the table, Mikasa was the first to break Levi's gaze. Her mouth had thinned, and she looked thoughtful.

Armin stared at Levi with a sudden realization. Along with Hanji and Commander Erwin, Levi was a five-year veteran of the Survey Corps… which meant that he'd survived the massive attempt to retake Wall Maria in which Armin's grandfather had perished. How many hundreds of untrained civilians, most of them not even equipped with maneuver gear, had Levi watched die? Armin imagined his grandfather amidst the bloodbath. Had his grey head turned in the hour of death to watch humanity's strongest soldier carving a swath through the battle? Had the sight inspired faint hope in his heart even as he stumbled onwards, shoulder-to-shoulder with the ranks of the doomed legion of the year 846?

Armin had no doubt that Levi lived by what he preached. How else had he survived, finding the strength to wrap his fingers around the hilts of two blades battle after battle?

Levi went on, gesturing with one hand. "Of course you feel terrible—that's only natural. You soldier on. It's not enough to be able to make a hard choice without hesitation. You have to give an order knowing that ten minutes or maybe an hour from now, you might be forced to make another sacrifice. And yet another. Without hesitation. You can't allow yourself the luxury of falling apart." His hand fell, resting as a fist on the table's edge.

"Sweet Rose," Connie murmured. "No wonder we're so unpopular everywhere."

A chuckle rolled across the dining room.

Armin briefly wondered whether Reiner, Bertholt, or Annie had arrived at the same creed. Had any of them ever come close to matching this grim, dark-haired corporal in sheer emotionless resolve? Perhaps not… wasn't that deliciously ironic?

"When the Commander made me a squad leader, he forced me to learn the basic principles and workings of military and common law." Levi reflected aloud. "A required step to comply with officer training standards and regulations. He made a noise that expressed his low opinion of the exercise at the time.

"When a court is tasked with deciding which cart-driver was responsible for a collision on the street, or when a tribunal is assigned to determine which military officer is most responsible for a lost battle, the judge applies a concept known as liability. They attempt to determine which person was independently the most responsible for the chain of events."

Armin had always had an interest in law, and followed Levi's words closely, but that interest, it seemed, was not universal—Connie was resting his head in his arms, asleep or close to it. Across the table, Eren was fidgeting with his teacup, rocking it from side to side. The others eyed Levi suspiciously, as though wondering whether he was threatening to court-martial them.

"By that measure," Levi continued, "Reiner Braun is the most responsible for everything that humankind has endured in the last six years. By destroying the inner gate at Shiganshima, he singlehandedly brought about the fall of Wall Maria, condemning to death not only those who were eaten alive during the retreat to Wall Rose, but also the hundreds of thousands who were sent to their doom a year later. Bertholt Hoover, while guilty of breaching the outer gate at Shiganshima, can only be considered directly responsible for a few hundred dead, all within the city itself. While he enabled Reiner's attack on the inner wall, he was not the direct perpetrator."

Levi paused. "As for this Annie… her targets were purely military in nature, and while she was directly responsible for four dozen scout deaths, this is a fairly bloodless butcher's bill compared to her compatriots'. Around a hundred bystanders were killed during the fighting in Stohess, but it's obvious that this were merely incidental." Despite having just attributed the smallest share of the guilt to Annie's actions, Levi's expression seemed to disagree. It bore a mask of cold vengeance.

Levi looked down the right side of the table and raised an eyebrow at Eren. "I suppose we are also somewhat to blame as well on that score. Eren, was it really necessary to throw her into the fucking Wall Cult cathedral?"

Eren visibly flinched, and he looked away. "Yeah… I didn't think it through at the time… I don't really remember much from the fight, come to think of it."

Mikasa had a strange look in her eyes. "She could have kidnapped you…"

"What?"

"I thought it was strange at the time. When she was bashing your head into that apartment building… she could have easily taken you from the titan. It's possible she panicked, but she just stood up and left you lying there in order to try and climb the wall…"

"Well it's a good thing she wasn't thinking things through either, then," Jean muttered.

Armin spoke up. "I don't think she panicked." He straightened in his seat. "Were she acting on fear and instinct alone, she would have killed Eren there and then to eliminate the threat. Instead, she ran for the wall."

His voice cracked as he voiced his conclusion. "I think she just wanted to run home. I think that right at the end there, she decided to abandon the mission. I can't be certain, but…"

A drowsy air seemed to have settled on the scouts seated around the table. Jean yawned, covering his mouth. Eren was flexing the fingers of his right hand absent-mindedly, a habit he had picked up ever since he had learned that self-injury was the trigger for his transformation. Armin drained the rest of his coffee, returning the cup to the table.

He looked around the room. Mikasa, Eren, Jean, Christa, Connie, himself. Sasha was on watch. Seven trainees of the 104th.

He knew that to some of them, Reiner, Bertholt, and Ymir were already as good as dead. Armin personally found it easier than expected to think of them as the enemy. Connie had taken their betrayal profoundly to heart, as had Eren. To others, such as Christa and a small part of Armin himself, it seemed as though their friends' absence was merely temporary. For him, it was as if a fragment of them hadn't quite left yet. He still woke up sometimes half-expecting to gaze blearily across the room to see Marco rigging his 3DMG harness for morning training. Even Annie—Armin imagined that had she walked in the cabin door at that very moment, his first, instinctive reaction would have been to vocalize a friendly greeting.

"Well, this has been fun," Levi droned, "but it's getting late. You lot should all get to sleep. Springer, don't forget to relieve Sasha on watch."

Six chairs squeaked against the floorboards as their occupants slowly rose from the table. In the corner, Christa yawned and left the room first, opening the door to the girls' section of the cabin. One by one, they filed out of the room, depositing their silverware in the water-filled basin by the windows.

Armin followed Eren's long, flickering shadow down the hallway to the men's quarters. Jean was seated on his bunk, squinting by candlelight at a folded sheet of paper that Armin assumed was a letter to his family.

Eren and Armin simply climbed into their respective bunks.

Their last male squadmate entered the room. Armin looked up from his half-unlaced boots in time to notice Connie's twisted expression as the scrawny soldier walked past where Jean was carefully folding his letter. Armin recognized a mix of raw grief and anger, with what he interpreted to be a subtle undertone of envy. The blond quickly looked away as his friend shuffled past, silently wishing Connie a peaceful, dreamless sleep.

Before darkness claimed him that night, Armin had the strange feeling that he was lying in his hard cot back in the trainee barracks. A deep, reassuring voice floated to the surface of his weary mind, conjured from his memory of that midnight hike half a lifetime ago…

_ Review and recheck everything, starting with your belt. Tomorrow will go fine._

_ You can do it._


	2. Chapter 2: But Also Beautiful 1 of 2

**This is part 1 of 2.**

Many a fic has been written about the day (if it ever comes) when Annie's crystal is broken. Most of it, in my opinion, ends up being a little OOC. As much as I love Annie x Armin, it's a little silly for them to be making out just minutes after the last piece of crystal has hit the floor. With this story, I wanted to try and explore a darker, more plausible take on what might happen if the Scouting Legion ever did manage to extract Annie Leonhart from her crystal. It's certain that they'd want to interrogate her, and it's equally certain that her ultimate fate probably wouldn't be too rosy. In addition, now that Annie is not only free of her prison but also free of any need to pretend to be somebody else, I was curious what changes, if any, might happen to her character. I also had a feeling that she'd have to come to terms with a lot of guilt and trauma from her actions.

Then, I threw in Armin. Not just because he's my favorite character, or because this is my favorite pairing, but because he's not only likely to be there if this scenario ever comes to pass, and because his relationship with Annie, in my opinion, will heavily influence what, if anything, she chooses to reveal or do.

I also hope this will illustrate to a degree why putting these two characters together is so dear to many fans. They both have a lot to learn from one another and a lot to gain from any relationship, and given the canonical past as well as the likely future, it really does seem that they're a good match.

Fair warning, this will get a little rough, and if this story does what I hope it will do, there will be MAD feelings by the end. Don't worry, though—I've left in a bit of hope and healing at the end too, so this is hardly a tragedy in any real sense.

**II.**

The fateful ring skittered across the floor of the dungeon, hurriedly wrenched from Annie's finger by one of the Survey Corps soldiers as his three comrades held her in place, forcing a thick strip of cloth between her teeth. A fifth soldier was rising back to her feet, cursing as she massaged the spot on her temple where Annie's defiant kick had landed.

The underground chamber echoed with their curses, grunts, and the rattling of their 3DMG gear as they wrestled with their captive.

Armin watched from the entrance of the room, flanked on either side by Hanji and Commander Erwin. Levi, fully equipped and dressed for combat, stood a few steps in front of the three of them. His stance remained casually slouched, but the tension in his neck and facial muscles indicated that he was poised for immediate action.

The crystal had been reduced to a fine pile of blue-white sand. An industrial magnet, of all things, borrowed from a wrought-iron plant, had finally done the trick, disintegrating a small fragment of crystal that Eren had generated for experimental purposes. When brought near Annie's gem-like prison, the glasslike surface had instantly turned opaque before falling apart in a shower of grains and small chunks. In less than a minute, the cascade of falling crystal had fallen away, exposing the small girl wearing a military police uniform. The scouts conducting the operation had pounced on her before she'd even been completely free of the gemstone, and they'd made sure to fully reduce the crystal to dust out of the concern that Annie might be able to somehow manipulate it.

Annie's eyes had remained tightly closed even as she struggled with her captors. It looked almost as though she was refusing to wake, fighting bitterly to regain the unconscious, deathlike sleep that they had dragged her from. With the blue filter of the crystal now gone, her complexion appeared dull and weakened. Her clothes and hair were somehow wet—moisture from her titan body, Armin guessed, trapped with Annie inside the crystal.

Armin shivered. The dungeon was cold, despite the torches burning on the walls. He imagined that a normal human, trapped in the non-insulating crystal, would have died long ago from such an environment. Assuming, of course, that the need to breathe, eat, and drink were nonfactors. They had discussed the possibility that they would recover a lifeless corpse from Annie's crystal, but it appeared that the titan-shifter's vitality, combined with her strange comatose state, had kept her alive.

Quite alive, from the look of the degree of resistance she was putting up. Armin could hear Hanji scribbling notes.

"Hold her arms out to both sides."

The five soldiers clustered around Annie looked up at the corporal before complying. Just at that moment, the girl opened her eyes for the first time.

Blue. Icy blue, like the flowering glory-of-the-snow that bloomed when the snows melted. Armin had almost forgotten.

Levi was walking slowly forward as the Survey Corps scouts forcibly extended Annie's arms. The prisoner's eyes saw him and filled immediately with fear.

"Annie Leonhart." Levi's voice was even, professional.

Annie stiffened as humanity's strongest soldier stepped within arms reach. She did not meet his eyes. Her gaze flickered around the room. Recognizing Armin, she blinked and immediately looked away, frowning.

A pang that felt like guilt traveled through Armin's body like a wave.

Levi exhaled. His hand suddenly darted out, fingers closing around Annie's chin in a death grip, forcing her head upwards. Annie struggled, doggedly avoiding the soldier's gaze, her eyes wide in terror. At Armin's side, Commander Erwin straightened as though suddenly concerned. After a moment however, Levi released Annie's jaw just as abruptly and took a step backwards, tilting his head to one side. "Do you remember me?"

Levi didn't seem perturbed by the lack of a response. When he spoke again, Armin shuddered violently and involuntarily at the brutal edge to his words.

"I keep my promises." Levi snarled. "Stand clear!"

Moving faster than Armin would have believed possible, so fast that he wondered if he was imagining things, Levi yanked his blades from their sheaths and amputated Annie's arms just below her elbows.

Annie screamed.

The room erupted. The soldiers who had been holding her had stumbled backwards, releasing their grip in their shock and surprise, leaving her to crumple, unsupported, to her knees. Armin reeled as though punched, and a cry of horror escaped from his throat, echoed by Hanji's similar gasp from his right shoulder. Even Levi seemed momentarily frozen, as though astonished at his own audacity.

Commander Erwin's reaction, however, was overwhelming in its fury.

"LEVI!"

Louder than any battle order Armin had ever heard given, louder even than his inhuman cry to advance on the day a titan's teeth dragged him from the saddle, louder still than any cry of pain Armin had ever heard, Erwin bellowed his subordinate's name with a resounding, titanic rage that blasted the entire room with the force of high explosive. Even Annie flinched where she lay crying, curled on the stone floor, blood pooling around her, thick steam rising from her ruined limbs.

Erwin took two steps forward, his face a mask of anger. "That's enough."

Levi had been positioning himself to strike at Annie's ankles. He did not outwardly acknowledge Commander Erwin, but he flicked the thumb triggers on his maneuver gear, his face expressionless as a stone. His two bloody blades clattered to the floor, and humanity's strongest soldier spun and marched out of the room, fingers still gripped tightly around his bladeless hilts.

The room was silent and motionless apart from Annie's wailing. The floor where she kneeled was crimson, and the white knees of her police uniform pants were rapidly turning red-brown as they absorbed the pooling blood. She was holding her crippled limbs close against her, rocking back and forth in anguish. Her cries, muffled and strangled by the loop of cloth between her teeth, were no less heartrending.

Armin realized that he had unconsciously taken several steps forward into the room. Behind him and to his right, Hanji stood frozen, mouth open, her notebook lying open on the floor where she'd dropped it. The soldier who'd thrown Annie's ring aside looked dazed as he wiped a splash of her blood from his face before turning to look at Erwin for instructions.

Armin had expected Commander Erwin's voice to carry a hint of tenderness when he spoke next, but his voice was firm and unyielding. "Carry her to the cell and have Dominika search her. Kurt, find a medic and see to it that her wounds are treated immediately."

Annie's eyes were shut tightly, her face wet with tears as she was carried past Armin and out of the door. Armin felt as though something inside him was being sliced to shreds as he listened to her sobs diminish down the corridor.

One of the soldiers bent to retrieve Levi's discarded blades, placing them gingerly on the desk in the corner of the dungeon. At the same time, Hanji stepped forward, hesitated briefly, and stooped to retrieve the severed hands lying upon the dungeon floor, placing them into separate burlap specimen bags. Lost in thought, Commander Erwin was walking towards the center of the room where the pile of crystal dust lay, mixing with Annie's blood where it touched the pool at one edge.

Armin stood alone, cold to his core despite the torch blazing on the wall behind him. He felt as though he'd aged five years in a single minute.

OOOOO

Erwin had set up a temporary office in the headquarters of the Stationary Guard, which sat nestled alongside the inner wall in Stohess. He stood behind a desk piled high with maps, stacks of documents, envelopes of various sizes emblazoned with the Survey Corps seal, and a messy jumble of stationary. Levi, Hanji, and Armin were standing across from him—Hanji squinting at the street below through the office's only window, Levi leaning casually against the far wall. At that moment, Armin was staring up at the wall from his position near the door.

He'd just noticed the brass plate that had been placed just above the doorframe. It read:

Room Dedicated to the Memory of Ian Dietrich

Captain of the Stationary Guard and Proud Son of Stohess

Killed During the Recapture of Trost in the year 850

The image of a tall, grim-faced officer sprang to his mind. Armin knew by now that most people caught in a titan's death grip screamed, begged, soiled themselves, or froze in terror in their final moments. Ian Dietrich had been one of the rare soldiers who had remained brave right up until the very end even as a titan's jaws closed around his neck. Looking up at the memorial plaque, Armin felt glad that the man's sacrifice had been honored.

Hanji's voice brought Armin's attention immediately back to the matter at hand. "Well, what now, Erwin?"

Commander Erwin's expression was impassive. With a small sigh of vexation, he put down the pen he was holding awkwardly in his left hand and demanded, "Levi, explain yourself."

Levi ran a hand against the wall and examined his fingertips as he replied, "I've always maintained that pain is a highly effective teacher. Her ability to regenerate is her loss and our gain this time. She needed a lesson that further resistance would be futile."

"I see."

Armin could tell from the look in Erwin's eyes that the older man wasn't satisfied with Levi's explanation in the slightest.

"You will of course refrain from giving any further such lessons in the future without orders," he admonished Levi. "The situation is already fragile enough as it is."

"Levi," Hanji added, "I remind you that what convinced Pastor Nick to divulge what he did was compassion and guilt, not the threat of force."

"I disagree." Levi replied, crossing his arms and sinking further into his slouch. "Nick was a hardened individual, bound by oath and rite and conditioned by a lifetime of secrecy to take his secrets to the grave. Annie Leonhart is strong, if Armin's description is accurate, but I do not see her as such a person."

"That hardly suggests that the rough approach is superior to any alternative," Hanji retorted. She turned back to the window. Suddenly, her face brightened, though Armin noticed that her eyes remained grim. "Oh look—that poor boy tripped over his shoelaces and fell into a puddle…" she chuckled softly.

Levi shrugged. "I have some experience with the two methods—enough to have faith in the value of both."

"I'm sure, but just because both methods work doesn't mean we should start by harming her."

Commander Erwin chose that moment to swear under his breath, and his three subordinates turned to him, surprised.

"What is it, Erwin?" both of them asked simultaneously.

"Nothing, nothing," the commander assured them with a shake of his head. He smiled. "I keep trying to use my lost right arm, that's all." He looked squarely at Armin. "What I meant was to ask you, Armin, about how you felt we should proceed with Annie Leonhart's interrogation."

Armin felt Levi and Hanji's eyes turn to him expectantly. Armin plunged into his thoughts, searching his memories, his knowledge, for anything that might be useful to determine how to proceed further.

As soon as Hanji and Eren had discovered the secret to breaking the mysterious crystal shell that human-piloted titans could form, Armin, Levi, Eren, Mikasa, and Hanji had been immediately dispatched to Stohess on Commander Erwin's urgent orders. Eren, Mikasa, and Levi, the latter largely recovered from his ankle injury, were assigned to provide security in the event of Annie's escape or transformation. Hanji was to apply the technique to Annie's crystal, conduct the interrogation alongside Erwin and Armin, and record any important scientific findings. Erwin's focus, of course, was on information of strategic value.

Armin had been chosen for his insight and perceptiveness. More importantly, however, Armin was there because Erwin believed he personally understood Annie best.

The room darkened as clouds passed by overhead in the sky outside. Several seconds had passed since Erwin had asked for Armin's opinion, and the young soldier paced several steps along the wall as he mulled over the question. His mind worked furiously to arrive at a strategy that would persuade Annie to part with whatever knowledge she held. At the same time, a part of Armin was still shaken and very much distracted by what had happened a few hours earlier in the dungeon.

He'd lied at the time about Annie's torture in order to elicit a reaction from Bertholt, but he'd never seriously contemplated the possibility that his bluff would become reality in the event that they ever managed to extricate Annie from her crystal. He winced as the recollection of Levi's swords flashing in the torchlight came to mind yet again, and forcefully pushed the image from his thoughts. Armin privately wondered if Bertholt would kill him and the others without hesitation the next time they met. Their friendship had been the price they'd paid to rescue Eren—the necessary sacrifice, one of many sacrifices made on that day.

At that moment, Armin settled upon a course of action. He cleared his throat, heart pounding, straightening as he turned to face his superiors.

"I believe…" he began, "I believe that I can not only get the information we need from Annie… but also persuade her to become our military ally."

Hanji stared.

Levi raised an eyebrow. "You're serious."

Erwin frowned slightly, but he seemed to be considering Armin's proposal.

"I am," Armin replied. "You'll have to just trust me, but I really do think that it's a possibility. The most important thing is that we have to convince her to trust us, but if we can do that, I believe that even if she proves unwilling to fight for us, she will at least share what she knows."

Outwardly, Armin might have appeared confident to the others, but his mind was in utter turmoil. The plan he had in mind was almost absurdly simple, but it would require a certain degree of personal courage on his own part.

Erwin's expression remained set in his frown. "You know I can't guarantee anything politically. I can barely ensure that our own soldiers won't butcher her in her cell as it is."

Armin nodded.

"How will you do this?" Hanji asked, "She's incredibly dangerous. If you manipulate or deceive her, she won't hesitate to turn on us, and you risk handing her a second chance to accomplish her original mission."

Suddenly, they heard footsteps in the hallway outside. Levi motioned for immediate silence, and they stood there quietly for several seconds as they listened to the sound of boots and voices grow and pass right outside the door. Armin caught a fragment of some gossip involving recent revelations about some soldier's mistress. The four members of the Survey Corps relaxed as the passing soldiers outside continued down the corridor, their laughter receding in the distance.

"Having her fight alongside us would be extremely difficult and risky, and it's a farfetched idea," Armin admitted in a quiet voice. "Even so, I believe it could be possible in theory."

"Are you planning to leverage her cooperation with guilt?" Levi said. "Is that it?"

"No, not exactly."

"Good." Levi glanced up at the ceiling. "That wouldn't be smart. Were you romantically involved with her?"

"No!" Armin exclaimed, his heart rate accelerating further.

"Excellent. Using that would have been even more idiotic."

"What exactly do you plan to do then, Armin?" Hanji asked. She left the window and paced over to the side of Erwin's desk.

"It's difficult to explain," he said. He took a deep breath and, adding as much of an air of confidence as he could to his voice, he continued, "I'm going to ask you all to trust me. All I plan to do is to speak with Annie alone and without guards. I can't guarantee that this will work, particularly after what happened this morning, and I can't even promise that I'll be able to return with important new information after this one conversation, but I'm reasonably sure that I do have a chance to persuade her to tell us what she knows."

Suddenly, Armin felt as though he were reliving the last time they had all gathered to devise a plan regarding Annie Leonhart. He envisioned the candlelit table in the meeting hall of the Survey Corps headquarters, surrounded by serious faces that had listened intently as he outlined each and every piece of evidence that pointed towards her secret identity as the female titan.

_What are you going to do if it turns out it isn't her?_

_Then I'll feel sorry for Annie._

As it turned out, he had felt sorry for her anyway.

"At the very least, what I'm planning to do won't hurt any of your efforts to… gain information… and I promise that I won't reveal anything of military importance—aside from the fact that we've uncovered Reiner and Bertholt's true identities, that is. With your permission, I believe that disclosing that knowledge would actually make her more willing to reveal what she knows," he finished. He was glad that his voice had not betrayed the sudden lump that had risen in his throat at the mention of his two former friends.

He looked to his superior officers. Levi shrugged again. Hanji sighed. Without saying a word, both squad leaders turned to their commander. Armin saw that speech was unnecessary between these three veteran soldiers. Erwin was now aware of their opinion of Armin's proposal, and they wordlessly awaited his final decision.

Commander Erwin placed his left arm against the desk and leaned forward. "Very well, Armin. You have permission to reveal our knowledge of the true identities of Reiner Braun, Bertholt Hoover, and the soldier Ymir, as well as our last knowledge of their whereabouts, should you deem it necessary. You have our trust in your judgment. I'll inform her guards and let them know to expect you."

That was it, then.

It was strange, Armin reflected. From the perspective of time alone, just a month and a half had passed since he and Annie had spoken last in the city streets of Stohess. Before that day, they'd last seen one another on the night of the branch selection ceremony for the 104th Trainee Corps. In that span of time, seemingly everything had changed—he'd gone from seeing her as an honest if distant friend, a capable fellow soldier, a strong fighter that he looked up to, to viewing her as a terrifying, unpredictable enemy.

He supposed that it wasn't so different this time. What was she now to him?

Or, was he the one that had changed?


	3. Chapter 3: But Also Beautiful 2 of 2

**This is part 2 of 2.**

**Thanks to for pointing out a misspelled name in the earlier chapters. That has now been corrected.**

Many a fic has been written about the day (if it ever comes) when Annie's crystal is broken. Most of it, in my opinion, ends up being a little OOC. As much as I love Annie x Armin, it's a little silly for them to be making out just minutes after the last piece of crystal has hit the floor. With this story, I wanted to try and explore a darker, more plausible take on what might happen if the Scouting Legion ever did manage to extract Annie Leonhart from her crystal. It's certain that they'd want to interrogate her, and it's equally certain that her ultimate fate probably wouldn't be too rosy. In addition, now that Annie is not only free of her prison but also free of any need to pretend to be somebody else, I was curious what changes, if any, might happen to her character. I also had a feeling that she'd have to come to terms with a lot of guilt and trauma from her actions.

Then, I threw in Armin. Not just because he's my favorite character, or because this is my favorite pairing, but because he's not only likely to be there if this scenario ever comes to pass, and because his relationship with Annie, in my opinion, will heavily influence what, if anything, she chooses to reveal or do.

I also hope this will illustrate to a degree why putting these two characters together is so dear to many fans. They both have a lot to learn from one another and a lot to gain from any relationship, and given the canonical past as well as the likely future, it really does seem that they're a good match.

Fair warning, this will get a little rough, and if this story does what I hope it will do, there will be MAD feelings by the end. Don't worry, though—I've left in a bit of hope and healing at the end too, so this is hardly a tragedy in any real sense.

**III**

Annie's new cell was even further belowground than the room they'd kept her crystal in.

Armin had met Annie's guards—two younger Survey Corps soldiers, a man and woman—at the arranged time. As the senior of the two soldiers handed the key to Annie's cell door to the blond scout, she informed him, "I've been ordered to lock the door to the staircase behind you. Knock six times when you come back up. If there's trouble, knock four times slowly." Thinning her mouth at Armin's nod of comprehension, she added, "I hope you know what you're doing."

"Thank you," Armin said simply.

The door slammed shut behind him as he made his way down the flight of stone steps, and suddenly his path was illuminated only by the lantern he carried in his right hand. Reaching the foot of the stairs, he found himself in a long hallway with a series of rooms on the right hand side. The hall was barely lit, with only a single lantern on top of a barrel to ward off total darkness. Determining which room was Annie's cell was obvious—a barred cell door had been specially installed in the doorway in question, and the cell walls looked as though they'd been reinforced with a fresh, additional layer of mortar and stones.

Armin suddenly felt a violent desire to be elsewhere—anywhere but this dismal corridor seventy feet underground. Apprehension seized him, and he hesitated where he stood at the end of the hallway. Feeling his heart pound in his chest, he remembered that he didn't have the slightest idea how Annie would react to seeing him. Nor had Armin come with any semblance of a plan for this encounter.

Armin steeled himself with the reminder that Commander Erwin, Levi, Hanji, and the entirety of humanity were counting on him, trusting him to not only face this encounter but leave this dungeon with something, anything, that would give their hopes a reason to burn brighter. Hadn't he learned over the last few months that he could be confident in his abilities, and that others trusted him enough to not only listen to him but risk their lives for his plans and conclusions?

Six months ago, Armin might have fled back up the stairs to bring the guards, Levi, Erwin, or even an entire army with him to help him face this girl, this enemy. Today, however, was today. As he stood there , Armin found himself watching the flame inside his lantern as it flickered again and again, wavering only to straighten and burn more brightly for an instant before waning once more.

A fitting metaphor for bravery.

He walked resolutely, almost mechanically, to the single doorway crisscrossed by iron bars. Placing his lantern to one side, he produced the key he'd been given with his other hand and reached for the lock hanging from the cell door.

A motion caught Armin's eye from the shadows deep within the room. It was accompanied by the sound of shifting lengths of chain. He could distinguish another noise emerging from the darkness, and realized with a start that it was the sound of her breathing. Could she be asleep? No, she had just moved, hadn't she?

"Annie?" he called into the room.

She did not respond. He now heard only total silence.

With a click of protest, the lock finally yielded, popping open. Armin removed it from the door, hanging it upon the bars at chest height. He pulled the heavy door open with one hand as he reached out with the other, grasping and lifting the lantern he'd put aside.

This gave the prisoner her first good look at Armin's face as he stepped into her cell.

"Armin?"

He froze momentarily at the sound of her voice. His own impulse to reply caught in his throat. Instead, he extended the lantern he held towards the center of the room, bathing the walls in its dim glow.

Steam was still rising from Annie's hands—that was the first thing Armin noticed. Her forearms had largely regenerated, but it looked as though the healing process had not yet proceeded beyond her wrists. The second thing he observed was that her arms were free of manacles. Instead, chains were fixed around her ankles, and a large metal ring had been locked around her neck. In the weak light of the lantern, Annie's face appeared gaunt and bony, as though she'd been a prisoner for far longer than a single day. Her hair was still tied in its distinctive bun; she was clearly incapable of untying it, and it seemed that her guards hadn't bothered.

Armin felt a wave of genuine guilt wash over him. Annie might have extinguished dozens of lives in her titan form, but there was no denying that he, Armin, had had a similarly profound impact on hers. He did not regret what he'd done… he just hadn't imagined that things would come to this. Not for a single moment had he ever wanted her to suffer so.

Annie watched his every motion as he walked over to where she was sitting against the back wall. Just as he knelt at her side, however, she looked away.

Now that he was close enough to reach out and touch her, Armin noticed that her eyes were red and heavy with fatigue. Her nose was runny, and streaks on her cheeks marked where tears had streamed down her face. She sat slouched against the cell's stone wall, as though the weight of her iron collar on her shoulders threatened to drag her down. Her half-healed arms were crossed, uniform sleeves torn where Levi's blades had cut through. Her healed skin was clean and unmarked, in stark contrast to the small cuts, bruises, and grime that marked her neck and face.

Finally, Armin found his voice. A lump was growing in his throat, and this time, there was no concealing it.

"I'm sorry about what they did to you. I really am," he breathed. Gripping a fistful of his cloak in one hand, he clumsily tried to wipe her face clean. She recoiled initially at his efforts, then relented just long enough for him to finish before turning her head away from him.

Annie's voice, bitter yet mournful, seemed to fill the small cell.

"I guess we've both been bad people to one another, haven't we?"

"We have," he replied.

Armin swallowed before adding, "I wish it hadn't had to come to that."

Annie's huff of exasperation was so soft it was almost inaudible. "Did you promise your superior officers that you'd be able to make me talk?"

Armin flinched. "I'm not here to make you talk, Annie."

He hadn't realized it until just a moment ago, but it wasn't a lie. As soon as he'd heard that Hanji had discovered a way to break the crystal, he hadn't been primarily interested in what Annie knew or didn't know, or where she came from, or what her goals and those of her fellow agents were. Rather, he'd wanted to come listen to her now that there was no longer any need for secrecy or deception between them. The truth was, Armin had argued and justified himself in Erwin's office for the sole purpose of coming here, alone, to talk with Annie and find out who she really was—not as a soldier, agent, or warrior, but as a human being. The answer to that question, he supposed, would also determine whether Annie could ever be persuaded to change her loyalties. So at the same time, Armin hadn't lied to the Survey Corps either.

Who was this strange girl, then? Did he know her?

Annie huffed again, disbelieving. "Ha. You're hopeless, Armin. Despite everything, you still haven't learned to lie."

"I wasn't lying."

Annie's eyes flashed with distrust at the words, and Armin reflected that he couldn't blame her. Suddenly, Annie turned her head to stare directly into Armin's eyes. "I could still kill you right now, at this moment," she growled.

Armin recoiled involuntarily, a shiver traveling down his side. "Huh?"

"I'm stronger than Eren is," Annie continued. She chose the moment to throw her elbow viciously into Armin's gut, sending him reeling over backwards with a gasp as pain exploded in his midsection. "I've regenerated enough by now. I could transform this instant and you'd be crushed in a second against the walls of this cell, Armin." She aimed a painful, accurate kick at his knee next.

Her words echoed around the dungeon as Armin lay sprawled on the ground, winded and struggling to draw breath.

"Go. Leave me alone," she finished, turning forward to stare at her feet, a scowl written across her features.

Armin coughed as he pushed against the cold, damp floor, struggling back up onto one knee. The stone was hard, he decided, but at least it felt cleaner than he'd expected.

"You won't," he wheezed. "Crush me, I mean."

Annie glared at him before returning her gaze forward. A length of her neck chain fell loose with a metallic clatter at the motion. "Don't get overconfident just because I spared your life once."

Still recovering from Annie's sudden blow, Armin moved back towards the sitting girl. He could see her watching him from the corner of her vision as he crawled neared her. The realization dawned in her eyes that he didn't remotely fear the possibility she might make good on her threat, and she seemed to shift uncomfortably as he drew close. Their shadows merged on the back wall as he stopped, then finally sat down at her side a second time. His knee brushed her side as he said quietly, "See? I knew you wouldn't."

Indeed, Annie made no sudden motion to raise her arm to her mouth or to bite through her tongue with her teeth. Instead, her shoulders shrugged, as though a silent admission of defeat.

They said nothing for what seemed like several minutes. Armin found himself watching Annie's shoulders rise and fall as she breathed regularly. Her gaze was fixed on the lantern sitting in the center of the cell, the thin wisps of smoke escaping from its metal body only to curl and vanish in the air. He watched the tiny flame flickering as twin reflections in her eyes. He knew her current expression of bored indifference well, and as always, he perceived a hint of the true conflict and turmoil underneath it all.

"Annie," he began hesitantly, "why don't you help humanity?"

Her response was a small release of the tense muscles in her face as she raised her brows briefly in surprise, but she said nothing. The reaction lasted only a moment. Her expression, her body language immediately became more defensive again, and she drew her arms closer around herself, the steam from her wounds rising to form a thin, hazy curtain between the two of them.

No matter how hard she tried to conceal it, he could see a raging guilt swimming behind her eyes. It was a testament to the trauma of Armin's own past that he could recognize the familiar marks of grief and loneliness, fear and self-doubt and… homesickness in the lines of her mouth, the posture of her arms. He was intimately familiar with much of what he saw, yet at the same time, Annie's burden of the soul was something altogether different from anything he had ever known. No matter the tragedies that had befallen his two childhood friends, Eren and Mikasa had always clung to a small reserve of remembered happiness. Even at the worst of times, an onlooker could see the telltale signs that these were two children that had once grown up well-loved, products of a deeply caring household. Looking at Annie, Armin could not sense even a single trace—not even a ghost—of a bright memory amid the wasteland of her past. She looked as though she had borne unassisted the full weight of life's reality for as long as she could remember. Amid all the refugee camps, landfills, military hospitals, and bloody battlefields that Armin had ever visited, he had never seen a soul so obviously desolate and alone. Struck, he felt something break inside him, and he abruptly lurched forward and wrapped Annie in a close hug.

She was cold to the touch. Annie flinched, inhaled, recoiled as though she'd been slapped. Her head whipped around, eyes fixed in a glare, and he felt her nose and chin suddenly pressing into his shoulder. Her arms reacted next an instant later, pushing hard against his chest. A muffled noise of shock escaped from her, as if he'd just plunged her into freezing water. When he didn't let go, she let out another small cry and bit him viciously above the collarbone, wriggling furiously to escape his embrace.

"A-a-a-ah," Armin exclaimed in surprise as she sank her teeth into his shoulder. He tensed at the pain, but fought the instinct to pull away from its source. Instead, he held Annie tighter even as he felt drops of warm blood trickle down his skin.

The force of her bite lessened, and for an instant he wasn't sure if she was relaxing her jaw or whether he was simply becoming numbed to the pain. He looked down at her, and suddenly Annie released her teeth. Their eyes met for an instant before Annie turned her cheek and kept it there, avoiding his face determinedly. That moment, however, was enough for Armin to look into her ice-blue eyes and see a terrible weariness, utterly devoid of the life so typical of a youth of their age. Annie's eyes had never been particularly filled with hope, but defeat and sadness now clouded them more than cynicism ever had.

He wondered briefly what she had just seen in his own eyes. Was his own gaze still as stubbornly hopeful as ever, filled with a belief in final victory and his dream of one day seeing the wonders of the outside world? Or, had something died in his own soul, just as the spark of kindness or the fire of a boyish enthusiasm had dimmed behind Christa and Connie's eyes over the span of just a few short weeks? Had his resolve hardened instead? Did he now wear the same permanent mask as Eren, Jean, and Sasha—the defiant yet bitter look of a hunted animal that, finally tired of running, had turned at last to fight and determine if it lived or died?

Armin was still holding Annie close, his arms around her back, his cheek pressed against the dirty hair at her temple. Having ceased to resist his embrace, she seemed to have settled for behaving as though he wasn't there. As the pain in his shoulder dulled to a persistent throb, Armin murmured quietly, "Annie… no matter what… I refuse—I absolutely refuse to believe that you're the cruel person you pretend to be."

Again, she did not reply. Armin's heart cracked anew as he realized that her eyes were filled with tears. When was the last time that somebody had held her like this? When was the last time she'd heard any words of reassurance? He realized that he had no idea where her home might have been, or even if anyone who might have cared for her was still living.

Annie nudged him insistently, and Armin finally unwrapped his arms from around her. She struggled to wipe her face and chin on the back of her arm, and he moved hastily to help her. As he dabbed at her cheeks, his elbow touched her forearm, and he inhaled sharply.

"By Maria, you're cold," Armin exclaimed. How had he failed to notice before? He paused, then reached for his collar to undo the clasp of his Survey Corps cloak. Gently, he pulled it from his back, gathered its folds in his hands, and draped the thick cloth over Annie's body, pulling the cloak up to her shoulders. In the dim orange glow of the lantern, the emblem of the wings of freedom settled over her chest. Looking around, he spotted the thin, crumpled blanket in a corner of the cell and the stuffed drawstring sack that was supposed to be her pillow. In a moment, Armin had draped the blanket over the folds of the cloak covering Annie. He moved next to place the filled sack between her back and the stone wall, and he was somewhat surprised when she obligingly leaned forward to let him. "I'm going to ask them to bring you a set of proper blankets."

When he straightened, Armin noticed that Annie was looking directly at him now, fresh tears sliding down her cheeks.

Suddenly seized with worry, Armin asked, "Annie—are they feeding you okay?"

Annie gestured wordlessly with her maimed left arm at the door, and Armin saw to his horror that two plates, a bowl, and two mugs were sitting there untouched.

The sight inspired a fierce anger within him. Had she asked her guards to cover her with the blanket she couldn't reach for? Had they coldly ignored the fact that she couldn't possibly eat while her hands were still missing?

He vowed that he would see to it that her living conditions were improved. He'd make sure they brought a real cot down to her, and that the soldiers assigned to watch over her were told—no, _ordered_ to treat her with respect and care. The memory of his stay at Trost's refugee camp as a boy overwhelmed him, and his own eyes watered as he wondered with frustration how it was possible for fellow humans to look at someone else in need and see them as something less than human…

It didn't matter what she'd done. There were times when even murder might be justified, but how could anyone think it acceptable to subject a helpless person to misery and feel nothing for them?

Annie suddenly spoke, surprising him. "It doesn't matter," she said. She let out a controlled sigh before adding, "Armin… thank you, but I'm as good as dead already…"

"What do you mean?" Armin asked her.

She had stopped crying as suddenly as she had begun. Nevertheless, Annie's damp cheeks still shone as she brought her knees to her chest. The cell rang with the sound of the chains locked to her ankles being dragged across the stone, and Armin realized that she was deliberately drawing attention to her bonds, reminding him of her larger predicament.

"They probably won't even shoot me," she speculated aloud. "They'll have to cut off my head, to make sure I don't survive the execution," her voice harsh. She looked directly at him again, and commented dryly, "I can't imagine any way that this has another ending, no matter what I say or what I do. Can you?"

He had a terrible vision of a blonde head stretched out over a block as a sword hovered, poised.

"It's not too late, Annie..." Armin began. No, he thought, he truly couldn't envision another path that the future might take. He _knew_ she was probably right in the long run, in fact, he was almost certain she was, and the realization made him feel as though he were the one condemned to death. So this was where three years of training and fighting shoulder-to-shoulder would end—with Armin Artlet bearing witness, a thick green cloak hanging from his back, as a fellow trainee was dragged to the center of the place of execution. A part of him did feel deeply angry at what she'd done and angry at himself for feeling anything but a sense of justice at the realization that Annie would answer for her crimes. But there was no silencing the other part of him that wondered at the meaninglessness of it all. Now it was his turn to feel the urge to weep. Annie's eyes widened as she watched him begin to break down, blinking as his eyes begin to water relentlessly.

"It doesn't matter what might happen…" he struggled to say. He reached desperately for her hand beneath the blanket before remembering with another pang that he had to settle for her wrist. "You _have _to be brave, Annie. You _have_ to try and live, and fight."

"Why should I?" she asked him. She shrugged, and Armin's cloak slipped a few centimeters off her shoulders. Annie's eyes moved to the lantern in the center of her cell again, and she sighed again. "It's a shitty world, one that I never took much pleasure being in…"

The words cut him to the bone as he truly understood the fatigue in Annie's eyes as they gazed blankly at the pinprick of light behind the lamp's glass doors. Something inside Armin, however, rose in rebellion at her statement. He, too, was intimately familiar with the heavy sensation of feeling alone, useless in a world that had dealt him seemingly nothing but poor cards. He'd seen his hometown destroyed, his guardians torn from him, his friends dying cruelly and unnecessarily. He acknowledged that he knew next to nothing about Annie, and that for all he knew his own experiences might well pale in comparison to the nightmares of her unimaginable past, yet he could not bring himself to accept for even a minute that the sentiments behind her words might be justified.

Armin shook his head, adamant in his disagreement. His voice broke as he replied, "The world is cruel… but it is also very beautiful." He smiled faintly. "I know you don't get along with Mikasa, but that's one of her sayings, and she's right."

"We do live in a beautiful world. That day, during our mission beyond the walls, I kept having to remind myself to stay alert, because everything we saw was so wild and breathtaking—even the ruined towns and buildings. It was such a bright, sunny day."

His memories of that day were filled with fear and horror. For many nights afterward, every time that he had dared to shut his eyes, he had fought the images of blood-spattered meadows and dark giants framed against the bright blue sky. He dreamed sometimes that he was back in the forest of tall trees watching as a dozen titans clawed at the bark beneath him, staring up at him with mad eyes and open mouths. He remembered in vivid detail how Squad Leader Ness had died to protect him, how Jean had been just a hair away from the same fate, how he, Jean, and even Reiner might have died horribly without Christa's gift of horses and life.

As he spoke, Armin felt almost as though some outside power was giving him the strength to speak coherently even as it felt like his throat was squeezing shut. He was speaking in spite of himself, in spite of his deepest fears, struggling to convince her not to despair. "Even the fighting was beautiful in a way... You could see all the good in people. Our men still flew after you to try and stop you even though they were terrified and knew it was suicide... Sometimes, you only saw the smoke signals, and you could only imagine what terrible, brave things were going on underneath…"

He mused, "Even on the day that Shiganshima fell, the sunset we saw from the boat was the most beautiful orange I've ever seen. It's strange, but I dream a lot about those days... and not all the dreams are nightmares." He looked up at her, meeting those tired blue eyes again, and gave her a crooked smile. "You noticed all of it too, didn't you?"

Beneath his touch, Armin could feel Annie's arm warming slowly. The steam from her wrist was condensing as it rose along the bottom of his uniform sleeves, leaving the fabric heavy and damp. His fingers could just feel the beating of her heart as her pulse coursed through her forearm.

He spurred himself onwards, speaking the words that came to him as soon as they materialized in his mind. "I always thought that snow was the most beautiful thing, Annie. You must have played in the snow when you were little, didn't you? It was always our favorite time of the year, for Eren and I, despite the cold. Mikasa though—she loves it when there's a strong wind and she can stand outside and feel it pass around her, like she's standing in a river..."

He was looking at her, and his knees were starting to ache from the contact against the stone floor. Armin's mind, however, was miles away as it traveled back through the past to places hundreds of miles away.

"People are beautiful too, Annie, even if all of us are angry or cruel sometimes when we're not thinking... and love is so very beautiful—even if it doesn't last, or if it hurts us, or if it makes us do stupid things... And for every good thing you see, Annie, you know that somewhere out there are a hundred things like it, just waiting for you to find them. There's so much in this world that I haven't experienced yet—and I never will be able to see it all… But even though I know that there are many terrible things that I've never heard of, there are also countless things that would make me laugh and smile and make me wish that my life would never end..."

Annie's expression had taken on a strange look, at once bitter yet melancholy. Though she appeared to be numbly lost in thought, Armin knew that she was listening, and he squeezed her arm gently. He swallowed. "You know, I've barely ever seen you smile or laugh, Annie…"

Suddenly, Annie interrupted him. Violently. Her voice was loud as she glared at him, shaking him as best as she could with her right arm. "Armin—why can't you see that it's useless? It doesn't matter anymore what this world is, even if I wished it did! It's far too late for me—I can't undo what I've done."

Her movements shook the cloak and blanket fully from her shoulders, and they fell to the level of the unicorn patch of the Military Police on her breast. Behind her bangs, her eyes were wild with hurt as she demanded, "How could anyone let me live after what I've done? I destroyed homes, betrayed humanity, helped the titans invade, killed people and their friends and their loved ones... I watched others die…"

She let her arm fall away from him.

"I deceived everybody I've ever known… and it didn't… it didn't even accomplish anything…"

Her voice trailed off, and her shoulders sagged. She seemed completely exhausted by the sudden outburst.

Armin felt drained as well by her words. His heart was heavy, and he almost felt like he was under a ghost of the catatonic state he'd been in on the day he thought he'd watched Eren be devoured, their hands just finger-lengths apart from touching… He felt as though he was watching another friend die, and once again, he was helpless to intervene…

He stared at Annie, at her red, puffy eyes, at her golden-haired head slumped in resignation, and somehow he found the strength to blurt: "I forgive you, Annie…"

Her head spun, and she glared at him. He saw that, instead of genuine anger, his declaration had instead evoked a mixture of fierce disbelief and hurt.

He straightened, and his entire body shuddered as he slowly added, "And what's more, I'm not the only one who would. Lots of people care about you, Annie—more than you realize."

Gradually, he slid himself across the floor of the cell to sit side-by-side with Annie. The collar of his uniform, stiff with drying blood, stuck to the wound near his neck as he moved. With each push of his arms against the stones, he could feel the dull throb of a developing bruise just below his ribs.

"I care about you, Annie. Bertholt and Reiner care about you too—."At the mention of her fellow titan shifters, Annie jumped slightly, and Armin hurriedly explained, "—we know about them now, yes. They escaped, and I think they're fine. They care a great deal about you though, and they were hurt when they had to leave you behind. When I told Bertholt we were holding you prisoner, he went mad and tried to kill me… you know how he feels about you, don't you?"

He shifted close to Annie until the Survey Corps patch on his shoulder pressed lightly against the Military Police badge she wore.

"They're not the only ones either—Eren was so shocked that day when we found out who you were that he almost couldn't transform to fight you. He couldn't bring himself to accept the truth, even when he'd seen it with his own eyes. You were his friend, and despite how he is, I would bet everything I have that he would still be able to forgive you."

He continued, "Annie, I really think there are countless people in this world that would forgive you. Franz, Hannah, Nack… Thomas and Marco... they may have died to titans, and I'm not saying that it would be simple, but I'm sure they would have found it in their hearts to forgive you one day. Mina… Mina enjoyed being around you, and she always defended you when other trainees would comment on your odd behavior. Mina always described herself as your friend to me… I'm sure she would have understood…"

The lump in Armin's throat had subsided as he'd talked, but it redoubled instantaneously when his mind arrived at what he wanted to say next. He hiccupped, and began, "My grandfather…"

Armin's voice failed him as his eyes welled up and his fingers shook. He could almost feel the touch of that strong, rough hand on his head again as his grandfather placed his beloved straw hat on his grandson's golden hair… He sniffed, helpless as old grief threatened to overwhelm him. As the levee finally broke and tears poured down his face, Armin forced his words out one at a time…

"He never… once raised his voice…"

"—taught me always to be kind…"

"He invited… some kids that used to pick on me…"

Three children sitting at the table. A look of patience on a kind, bearded face. Sincere guilt. Forgiveness. A book returned.

"—us all… potato stew…"

Callused fingers ladling stew into bowls. The familiar aroma of wild onion and garlic. Warm potatoes melting on his tongue.

His throat and his heart both felt as though they were constricting to a finger's width...

"He even... forgave... the government... that sent him to die... I'm…"

City bells tolling on a grey morning. A wrinkled face bravely smiling as a future reunion was promised. Shining eyes that could not support the lie. A goodbye. A gray head streaked with black that did not look back.

With a final bellow, Armin cried out.

"I'm sure that he would have forgiven you too!"

He heard a strangled cry, felt cold arms wrap around him, and suddenly he and Annie were locked in a fierce embrace. Her arms were coiled around his neck while his enveloped her torso, and he could feel her small body shake with her own sobs. They buried themselves in one another, their tears wetting each other's neck and shoulder. They held on to one another as though the world would end if they let go.

OOOOO

"iwanttogohome…" Annie murmured, so quietly that Armin barely heard the words.

They held one another in a small, dark cell of a dungeon seventy feet underground.

OOOOO

Armin's spine and neck were stiff, his leg had fallen asleep, and his shoulder ached where it met the stone wall. He was sure that Annie was in similar discomfort, but still they held each other, neither wanting to be the first to let go.

A part of him reflected on how strange they would look were Annie's guards to stumble across them.

"I'm… I'm so sorry…" Annie said next, once they'd long lost track of time.

"I'm sorry too…" he gasped.

Both of their uniforms were thoroughly damp, now, and Annie was starting to shiver. He could feel goosebumps on her arms. Finally, it was out of concern for her health that Armin loosened his hold in order to pull his cloak and her blanket around her again. As Annie let go of him in turn, he noticed that her limbs were a little closer to fully regenerating—her palms had healed up to where the webbing between thumb and forefinger would be on a healthy set of hands.

_Even if the physical wounds can heal, there's no way to erase the pain. _

Guilt washed over him once more as he remembered that despite what had just happened between them, they remained captor and captive. He might feel responsible for her well-being and happiness, but his soldier's oath and his loyalty to humanity would demand other responsibilities from him. His convictions bound his actions at least as strongly as Annie's mysterious beliefs compelled her.

Annie seemed distant again as Armin wiped her face and neck dry, fetched her one of the cups of water to drink, and repositioned the cushion behind her back. Her expression however, while still troubled, seemed harder and stronger. "So, are you going to go back to your officers now to tell them you succeeded?" she asked cynically, her voice hoarse. She looked at the rising soldier of the Survey Corps sitting next to her as she said this. Her tone, however, lacked any real malice.

In the lantern's gentle glow, Annie looked profoundly tired, almost lifeless. Yet at the same time, it seemed to Armin that a part of her was somewhat at peace.

Armin shook his head. "I'm going to get you some food, more light, and a real bed."

"Then," he added, "I'm coming right back."


	4. Chapter 4: Errors

Not enough has been written on the strategies and tactics behind employing maneuver gear use. We see soldiers fighting titans in the anime/manga, and it's often clear that certain techniques are being used, but none of it's explained in detail, and I thought that I'd center this chapter around exploring what sorts of theories and approaches there might be to using 3DMG against titans. It's partly inspired by the Attack on Titan tribute game, which I am absolutely terrible at!

Chronologically, this story takes place in the days following the capture of Annie in the district of Stohess, while Eren is still recovering from his battle with the female titan. In other words, the story arc in which titans are encountered inside Wall Rose has not occurred yet. Armin has been assigned to review current maneuver gear tactics, which proved virtually useless against the intelligent titan encountered by the Scouting Legion.

After the most recent manga chapter (53 or 54?), which featured the conversation between Erwin and Nile Dok, I found myself very interested by the character of Nile. Once again, this manga series shows that nobody is really black or white.

Fair warning, a significant amount of this story will consist of the text of the maneuver gear manual that Armin is reviewing.

As always, please leave a review! I hope you enjoy reading!

OOOOO

_An Analysis of Common Errors Responsible for Combat _

_Deaths among 3D Maneuver Gear Troops_

_Mike Zacharius, Petra Ral_

_Approved by Scouting Legion Commander Erwin Smith_

_January of the year 849_

_Humanity's experience using 3D maneuver gear against titans was extremely limited before the breaching of Wall Maria in the year 845. Prior to this event, the only employment of maneuver gear in combat had been limited to the nineteen expeditions conducted by the Scouting Legion before the fall of Shiganshima district. The loss of the Wall Maria territories to the titan invasion was a brutal surprise to a military that was largely unprepared to deal with the sudden need to meet titans in open battle. Although human forces suffered greatly in this turbulent time, the crisis ultimately brought about a positive program of military reform that has immeasurably increased the readiness and competence of our soldiery. As of this document's writing in the year 849, a total of forty-seven expeditions by the Scouting Legion have been dispatched beyond the walls, with moderate to fierce fighting occurring on every expedition without exception. In addition, the withdrawal from Wall Maria in the year 845 was also marked by frequent titan encounters as the Garrison defended strategic positions in order to delay the titan advance and allow the civilian population to evacuate. Lastly, the failed effort to recapture Wall Maria in the year 846 was the single largest battle fought against titans by humanity in over a hundred years, though accounts of the expedition are fragmented and incomplete due to the extremely small number of survivors._

_As a result of these experiences, our military forces have recently learned a great deal about what to expect from any future fighting. However, current training practices and battle strategy are colored heavily by a degree of hysteria and pessimism. For instance, it is held as a fundamental tenet of current military thought that approximately thirty soldiers, on average, must be committed in order to defeat a single 13-meter class titan. However, the Scouting Legion has learned through extensive practice that four or even two veteran soldiers are in fact capable of dispatching a typical large titan. _

_Through the Legion's experiences, a great deal has been learnt regarding the best practices for small groups or even individuals that are forced to give battle when the option of avoiding titans is no longer feasible. This knowledge, however, has come at a heavy cost, as a Scouting Legion soldier has a 90 percent chance of perishing over the course of four years of service. A large number of inexperienced soldiers are killed in their very first or second attempt to engage a titan, and no more than fifty percent of fresh recruits are expected to survive their first expedition with the Scouting Legion._

_This high fatality rate, however, has permitted our branch to better understand the mistakes and errors that are most commonly responsible for casualties. The analysis presented by this document, compiled by three of the most experienced soldiers serving in the Legion, summarizes a list of ten fatal factors that, together, appear to account for the overwhelming majority of human losses suffered when employing maneuver gear against normal-type titans._

_This analysis is intended to serve as an aid for future training and the development of improved exercises and battle tactics. Soldiers that survive their first campaign demonstrate a markedly higher survival rate and combat effectiveness, and humanity will be greatly strengthened if it is able to cultivate a large body of these experienced troops. It is the firm belief of the authors of this manuscript that future efforts to resist the titans will be immeasurably aided by a strong effort to educate soldiers and trainees on the most common causes of battle casualties._

_**I. Technical Errors: **_

_Without question, a great number of the soldiers that are killed fighting titans perish as a result of small maneuvering mistakes made under stress, resulting in a speed of flight or path of travel that deviates from what the user expected or intended. Even small differences between the expected and actual trajectory of a soldier using maneuver gear are sufficient to cause collisions with obstacles, loss of control, or simple panic. These positioning and maneuver errors, caused by inefficient usage of gas propellant, poor choice of anchor points, lack of experience, and the general failure to use the maneuver gear in a manner that achieves the expected result, are overwhelmingly the most lethal causes of combat deaths among maneuver gear-equipped soldiers._

_**II. Failure to Consider Escape Paths in Advance of an Attack:**_

_ When executing an attack against a titan of any size, it is of the utmost importance to rapidly formulate a complete plan that includes the approach, the attack phase itself, as well as the intended direction of escape. Experienced veterans perform this preparatory planning instinctively, additionally considering alternative attack and exit routes to account for the unexpected. Failure to account for an escape route is a risky gamble that has cost hundreds of soldiers their lives when they complete or abort an attack only to find themselves either stranded due to a lack of anchor surfaces, surprised by an unseen threat, forced to improvise a clumsy escape at dangerously low speed, or in imminent danger of a crash. Sadly, most fatalities that result from this error are incurred when soldiers execute an unplanned attack in a desperate attempt to save the life of a comrade in danger._

_**III. Poor Situational Awareness:**_

_ Despite their size, titans are often overlooked or unnoticed by distracted or inattentive soldiers until it is too late. A common mistake is for a scout to look back over their shoulder at the target they have just attacked only to be killed as a result of this split-second of unawareness. Similarly, squads have suffered unnecessary casualties in the past when they have elected to engage twelve-meter to fifteen-meter classes without first checking for three-meter to six-meter classes concealed in the shadows or behind obstacles. Soldiers are also often killed while focused on eliminating one titan and failing to notice the arrival of additional threats. These casualties are tragically avoidable, and should addressed with extreme emphasis during training._

_**IV. Use of the Titan as an Anchor Point:**_

_ While the placement of maneuvering gear grapples in the flesh of the targeted titan and the use of a titan as an anchor point for repositioning are both essential techniques for combat in open ground and even in areas well suited for 3DMG combat, inexperienced or less-skilled soldiers often fail to account for the fact that a titan is a moving object that consequently behaves differently than a stationary anchor point. A walking or running titan imparts an additional physical influence on anchored wires that may result in a flight trajectory radically different from the intended path of travel. Additionally, a titan's limbs or its movement behind an obstacle may seriously interfere with wires with unpredictable results, sometimes even preventing proper grapple release. Soldiers firing anchors into titans during combat must account for these possibilities, and should not use titans as anchor points when a safer alternative is available._

_**V. Failure to Exercise Adequate Caution when Engaging Aberrant Titans:**_

_ Aberrant titans are uniquely and lethally dangerous, even to the seasoned soldier. Approximately 40% of total Scouting Legion casualties are inflicted by aberrants, despite the fact that they comprise less than ten percent of all titans. They are also responsible for the overwhelming majority of deaths among experienced veterans. The fact that a titan may appear to show typical behavior when first encountered, only to exhibit unexpected speed and/or agility when engaged, makes them particularly lethal to unprepared troops. Aberrant behavior remains largely beyond our understanding, and their unpredictability often leaves soldiers with no other option but to fight and defeat them. Due to the great deal of variability in the characteristics of individual aberrants, the most reliable method of eliminating them is to disable their mobility through temporary damage to key motor muscles, ensuring a clear strike at the nape of the neck._

_**VI. Grapple and Wire Awareness:**_

_ Maneuver gear is strongest when used to fight a small-scale engagement against individual targets. The chaos of a crowded battlefield requires that all soldiers exercise additional care during maneuvering and combat. Collisions with friendly wires or soldiers, casualties from fired grapples, wire entanglement, and blade injuries are a grim reality of 3DMG combat. Prior to the development of coordinated squad attack and movement drills, devastating mass collisions were single-handedly responsible for the failure of several Scouting Legion expeditions. Advanced team-based training has been found to be the single most effective tool to minimize the likelihood of such disasters. All soldiers should also be intensively trained to maintain a meticulous awareness of the positions of their blades, wires, grapples, and bodies, as well as the implications of their next movements and actions, even under high-stress conditions._

_**VII. Persisting in a Failed Attack:**_

_ Even experienced soldiers occasionally fail to cleanly cut away the nape of a titan on the first attack. However, it is a grave mistake to immediately re-engage the titan, either as an individual or with a team, following an unsuccessful strike. The decision to engage a titan in the first place requires careful consideration of attack and escape paths, nearby threats, the area of combat, and an assessment of the necessity of eliminating the target. Following a failed attack, one or more of these factors have often changed, and continuing to engage the titan may be prohibitively dangerous or even unnecessary. The pursuit of vengeance, in particular, is a particularly irresponsible reason to continue attempting to kill a titan that has already caused casualties._

_**VIII. Gas Management:**_

_ Especially over the course of a long engagement or several successive battles, gas efficiency is the single key to long-term survival. Given suitable terrain and anchor surfaces, soldiers are capable of outrunning and avoiding even large numbers normal-type titans indefinitely for as long as their gas supplies and physical stamina last. It should be unnecessary to explain that an exhausted set of gas cylinders constitutes a death sentence, but to current knowledge, no soldier has ever survived fighting a titan on foot. Fighting when low on gas should be avoided unless as a measure of extreme last resort, and soldiers should make all efforts to use their maneuver gear as efficiently as possible, exchanging gas cylinders whenever the situation permits._

_**IX. Failure to Account for the Danger Presented by a Titan's Head:**_

_ Among new recruits, technical mistakes and poor planning and battlefield awareness are responsible for the large majority of casualties. The most common tactical error, however, is failing to maintain a safe distance from a titan's head during combat. Few mistakes are so immediately fatal. Titans have been shown to exhibit some rudimentary ability to predict the trajectory of moving objects, and are well capable of catching careless soldiers with their mouths and teeth. For this reason, a titan's head should be treated with the same respect as its hands and arms. An attack maneuver that comes close to the front or sides of a titan's head should never be executed under any circumstances._

_**X. Poor Battlefield Positioning:**_

_ Due to various factors, such as the treatment of casualties, resupply of gas and blades, miscommunication, fatigue, the rout of supporting friendly squads, the loss of horse transport, and simple combat stress, medium to large-scale battles against titans often result in squads or platoons that find themselves surrounded or cornered. Often, groups naturally cluster on safe terrain such as tall buildings, only to realize too late that all paths of retreat have been cut off. Given sufficient time, titans will scale even formidable obstacles and structures, therefore safe havens often offer only a very temporary respite. The longer a surrounded group hesitates, the greater the likelihood that they will be forced to fight a final, desperate battle in order to escape. To avoid the inevitable losses that result from such disadvantageous combat, squads should constantly endeavor to reposition themselves in a manner that always leaves one or more options for retreat available. Soldiers should also be encouraged to take initiative and deviate from issued orders when necessary for the safety of the unit._

Armin looked up from the bound manuscript to glance at the row of tall windows set into the wall of Stohess's military library. The sun's rays shone directly through the glass, spilling across the aisles and bookshelves and tracing long shadows that stretched along the length of the library's main hall. The afternoon had begun its dramatic transition to the dusk. Within a few hours, the sun would set, and Armin would have to retrieve a lamp from the recorder's office if he wanted to continue to reading and writing through the night.

Gazing at the dull glow of Stohess's apartment roofs and bell towers beneath the sun, Armin thought that this part of the city looked almost as though the chaotic battle between two titans had been just a thing of the imagination. The only sign of the catastrophic destruction that had consumed the district's eastern quarter three days ago was the haze of dust that hung in the air, infusing the sunlight with a dirty tone of sepia. Beyond the rooftops stood the dark outline of Wall Sina, its great protective height seeming to scrape the clouds. Once, Armin had found the commanding presence of the walls a source of comfort—a sign of humanity's resistance against the terrors that threatened them. Now that he knew what horrors stood, dormant, inside them, Sina's height and grandeur served only to underline the nightmarish doom that had befallen mankind, the absurdity of the hopelessness of their struggle to stave off the inevitable end.

With the defeat and capture of the female titan, humanity had eliminated one dangerous existential threat to its existence. But with the revelation of the colossal titans within the walls, it seemed that their very existence had always been a lie—a death trap of a sanctuary, worse than any cage.

Yet at the same time, with the discovery of Eren's titan shifting power, humanity had never felt a greater hope…

He turned his attention back to the sheets of blank paper that he had stacked next to the Survey Crops manuscript he'd been reading. Dipping his pen in ink, Armin positioned his hand at the top of the first empty page and wrote:

_Recommendations for the Combat Use of_

_3D Maneuver Gear Against Intelligent Titan Shifters_

_Armin Artlet_

He left some space for Commander Erwin's signature and seal of approval, then added:

_September of the year 850_

Armin didn't feel particularly qualified for the task he'd been set with, though he understood why he had been chosen. Still, while theoretical questions were certainly his strength, his performance with the maneuver gear was worse than mediocre, to the point that he felt that he lacked the necessary personal experience with its combat use to arrive at any new tactics or conclusions. He could list all of the technical specifications of the 3DMG gear and harness, describe the elements of a perfectly delivered nape strike, and analyze the steps required to execute a slingshot turn, surface-anchored climb, or emergency directional change, but his performance in combat and on the training courses was abysmal. Routine maneuvering was already something he found relatively challenging, yet most of his friends seemed to take to it naturally, almost instinctively.

He didn't delude himself when it came to his ability in actual combat. Should he ever find himself forced to fight a titan alone… it might likely mean the end of him. He shuddered as he recalled the all-consuming terror and despair he had felt as he'd slid down a titan's tongue, fingers struggling to find a grip on something, anything—and then Eren's hand had closed around his own…

He'd felt as though he'd died and lived and died again in the space of minutes that day.

Armin didn't understand why Mikasa or Levi had not been assigned instead with compiling this list of considerations for fighting titan shifters. Mikasa was highly intelligent, after all, though her mindset tended to favor a brutally pragmatic focus that sometimes missed the strategic or long-term picture. In addition, she was an expert with the maneuver gear, and she and Levi were the only soldiers of the Scouting Legion that had been shown to be remotely capable of challenging the female titan alone. Levi was currently recovering from his ankle injury and consequently had ample free time, and his long years of experience with the Legion as well as his combat abilities and formidable cunning seemed to make him an ideal candidate.

Then again, Levi had not participated in the creation of the manuscript he'd just read either. In fact, his name did not appear on a single one of the numerous Scouting Legion publications, reports, and documents that Armin had consulted so far.

Upon further reflection, Armin remembered that Mikasa had actually asked Levi at mealtime once why he seemed to keep his approaches and strategies for fighting titans secret instead of teaching them to the rest of the Scouting Legion. Levi had simply replied, "They're no secret. It's just meaningless to talk about them. Every soldier has a different physique, weight, strike characteristics, and level of comfort with maneuver gear, as well as different personal habits. My abilities are matched perfectly with my temperament and what I am physically capable of. Each soldier must learn how to survive and fight in the way that suits him or her best—forcing others to adopt and conform to my techniques might end up killing them."

Armin was still unsure of what to make of humanity's strongest soldier. From his limited knowledge of the man, Levi was highly rational, capable of ruthlessly pursuing any course of action that he deemed efficient, even if the choice might have shocked a more empathetic individual. His qualities hardly seemed suitable for leadership, yet he was completely trusted by everyone that served with him. Cool and collected in even the most chaotic of situations, keenly aware of his mortality yet confident in his abilities, it seemed that Levi inspired trust through brutal honesty alone.

Bringing his mind back to the matter at hand, Armin realized that the sun was now setting in earnest behind the inner wall to the west. The library's hall had dimmed considerably. He ought to return to work if he wanted to finish in time for dinner.

_Intelligent titans._

He had heard from some of the other soldiers that Annie had killed her victims with a casual cruelty—ripping soldiers limb from limb, dragging others to death behind her as she ran. He didn't know the truth of the stories—some of the scouts were almost certainly exaggerating. A few soldiers were claiming that the female titan had breathed fire at them like some mythical drake of old, while the sole survivor from Darius Baer-Varbrun's destroyed squad swore that she'd had four arms. All Armin had witnessed of Annie's handiwork had been the deaths of Ness and his assistant Siss during the last expedition, both dashed violently to pieces against the ground by their 3DMG wires, as well as her defeat of several squads of soldiers during the Stohess operation. From what he'd seen, the killing had been accomplished quickly and efficiently. He still wasn't quite sure what to believe.

She had spared him on the day of the expedition—not once, but twice… Yet at the same time, she had aimed to kill when fighting first Jean, then Reiner, then Mikasa. And during the battle in Stohess, she hadn't held back in the slightest.

It had been his plan, after all, Armin admitted. In retrospect, he had been foolishly naïve to ever believe that it would succeed—everything had hinged on Annie's willingness to trust him, and as events had proved, that assumption had been doomed to failure from the start. And he had completely failed to predict that she possessed a backup method of inflicting self-injury… Eren's sudden inability to transform had almost been the last nail in the coffin. Had it not been for Erwin's insistence on a monumental level of preparedness—additional net traps, the deployment of the entire Scouting Legion—Annie might well have scaled Wall Sina and escaped.

Armin frowned and leaned back to stare at the ceiling. In the ceiling above him, a great painting of the Scouting Legion's crest stretched overhead, marking this section of the library as the area dedicated to that branch's materials and records. He felt strangely cold. How many scouts' lives had he, Armin, doomed by remaining silent after he'd seen her present Marco's 3DMG gear as her own that day? Why hadn't he spoken up then? They hadn't had the slightest idea at the time of the kind of power she possessed, but they would have had the advantage of total surprise… Annie would not have even suspected that her cover had been blown. Eren, still recovering in his quarters, was still consumed with guilt at his decisions during the battle in the tall trees, at his initial inability to transform three days ago, and at his moment of hesitation that had allowed Annie to escape into her crystal. Armin could easily understand and forgive his friend's errors—they were human mistakes, involuntary and well-intentioned. His own voluntary silence, however, had been incomprehensible and inexcusable, even at the time.

He would not make such a mistake again.

Armin fidgeted as he sat, pen in hand. Where could he begin? The female titan was such a formidable enemy that Eren in his titan form had barely been sufficient to defeat her. There was hardly any guarantee that Eren would necessarily be present the next time the Legion faced an intelligent titan shifter, but how on earth was it possible for them to defeat one with human soldiers alone? He'd read all the reports of the 57th expedition. Of nine known attempts by various squads to engage the female titan, only the special operations unit had even succeeded in inflicting so much as a single wound. Seven of those squads had been left with just one or two survivors. The other two had been wiped out completely.

Suddenly, Armin heard the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps. The boy, conditioned since his youth to conceal whatever he was reading whenever others neared, instinctively slammed the manuscript shut and looked up defensively in the direction the newcomer was coming from.

A figure wearing a dress uniform marked with the green unicorn of the military police stepped into view from around the nearest bookshelf. Catching sight of Armin, the tall man stopped, and Armin recognized the thin, black-haired officer from Eren's trial—the Chief of the Military Police Brigade, Nile Dok. Armin put down his pen hurriedly, stood from his chair and saluted, his initial nervousness at being disturbed quadrupled by the knowledge of who he was standing across from.

The man narrowed his eyes at Armin without returning the salute. "What are you doing here? This building is restricted."

"I am conducting research on behalf of the Scouting Legion under the orders of Commander Erwin Smith, sir!" Armin exclaimed, maintaining his position of attention. "I have a letter of authorization if you wish to see it."

Nile made a neutral sound at the mention of Commander Erwin's name, "Hm." He waved a hand, giving Armin permission to be at ease. The policeman looked over Armin briefly with a critical gaze, his eyes resting briefly on the Legion's emblem sewn above Armin's heart. "Rose… Erwin must be desperate for recruits by the look of you. How old are you?"

"Fifteen, sir."

"So you were one of this year's graduates, then," Nile reasoned aloud. "In which division of the 104th Trainee Detachment were you trained?"

Armin wondered if he was being cross-examined. It appeared that the chief of police did not recognize him as one of Eren's childhood friends who had been present at the trial. Looking Nile Dok straight in the eye, Armin replied, "The Southern Command Region, sir."

The implications of that statement were clear on both of them. Some members of every trainee class, irrespective of region, never returned home—unlucky victims of the harsh lessons of the military instruction program. Never before, however, had so many recruits from a single region been wrapped in bloody cloth and buried side-by-side beneath the crossed swords flag of the trainee corps. The whole of humanity had been given pause by the bloodletting among this group of youths. A memorial to the 104th was already under construction in Trost.

Seeing the sudden look in the police chief's eyes, Armin added, "I fought alongside my trainee corps at Trost during the operation to recapture the city. I have since served in my first expedition with the Scouting Legion, and I participated in the female titan capture operation that took place here several days ago."

Armin had predicted that the military policeman's eyes would widen at the realization that this frail recruit had more combat experience than he did. He had anticipated an embarrassed or shame-filled reaction, perhaps some acknowledgement in the chief of police's expression that would hint at a grudging respect for humanity's most battle-hardened military branch. Instead, Armin was surprised at the slight relaxation of Nile Dok's frown, followed by an almost invisible thinning of the lips that might have passed for a smile. The older man's eyes glinted with a look of genuine, open esteem.

"What is your name, soldier?" he asked.

"Armin Artlet, from the Shiganshima district, sir."

Nile blinked, his face hardening again. He glanced at the table Armin was sitting at, covered in stacks of documents and reports from the history of the Scouting Legion. Finally, the older man sighed and looked away.

"Carry on, Armin Artlet," he said. His expression was suddenly distant, as though he was revisiting something of the past. After a short pause, he added, "Just remember this—your bravery is equal to the Legion's reputation… but if bravery were all that really mattered, then Erwin and the rest of them would have reconquered the world a hundred times over by now…"

Chief of the Military Police Nile Dok inclined his head in a small nod, then turned and left. The click of his boots against the oaken floorboards filled the empty hall for a long minute. A door opened and closed, and Armin found himself alone in total silence once more.

Armin sat down and pulled his chair towards the table. Reaching for the Scouting Legion manual, he opened it again. He read the title and list of authors once more.

_Mike Zacharius, Petra Ral_

He hadn't known the redheaded special operations scout particularly well, but her death along with the annihilation of the rest of her squad apart from Levi had hit Eren hard. Nor was this the only document authored by one or more soldiers who were now dead. Squad leader Ness had written a piece on equestrian skills necessary for operations in titan territory. The 11th commander of the Scouting Legion had pioneered the system of smoke signals just before the expedition that had culminated in his death. Then there were the expedition reports themselves, each ending with a casualty list of the wounded, dead, and missing…

Suddenly, Armin understood. He thought he knew now why Erwin had chosen him for this task, not Mikasa or Levi. A skilled soldier asked to devise a plan to defeat an intelligent titan would try their utmost to formulate strategies that might work, and they would throw themselves at the foe without hesitation during any battle itself, but a weak soldier would question the very decision to fight or attack where a hardened veteran would not.

A strategy had to be within the abilities of all of its participants, not just those who were the most capable. The long-range scouting formation employed poor fighters as messengers and horse relay members. His own plan to kill the titans in the basement of the Garrison headquarters in Trost had utilized the less-skilled soldiers as bait to allow the seven top trainees to strike.

Levi or Mike Zacharius or Mikasa might stand a chance against an intelligent titan, but they were exceptional. The typical soldier, or one who was merely above-average, stood no chance.

And from Armin's perspective, that made it clear what the single deadliest mistake was.

_Recommendations for the Combat Use of_

_3D Maneuver Gear Against Intelligent Titan Shifters_

_Armin Artlet_

_September of the year 850_

_ When confronted by a hostile human-controlled intelligent titan, the most fatal mistake that can be made by maneuver gear-equipped soldiers is the decision to engage at all. Only an exceptionally skilled maneuver gear user, capable of executing wildly unpredictable attack paths and possessing almost inhuman talent and reaction speed, can have any hope of defeating an intelligent titan._

_ Without a well-designed ambush, it is impossible to kill or capture a titan shifter in titan form, even with the participation of elite veteran soldiers. The combination of an aberrant titan's strength, speed, and vitality, together with the human operator's intelligence and awareness, dooms any attempt to fight an intelligent titan with maneuver gear to failure. The shifter's ability to protect its weak points, harden or regenerate parts of its body, understand maneuver gear tactics, manipulate grapples and wires, and predict the likely path of fast-moving objects together make its titan all but invincible. _

Armin sighed, then grimly added:

_ A single intelligent titan, fighting largely without assistance, was able to quintuple the highest casualty total ever experienced at the hands of an individual titan in the entire history of the Scouting Legion. Unless the situation demands a massive loss of life, combat against a titan shifter should be avoided at all costs._


	5. Chapter 5: The House With the Green Door

**Chapter 6: The House with the Green Door**

We know what happened to all of the top ten members of the 104th Trainee Corps following the survivors' decisions to join the Scouting Legion—with the exception of one. What did Annie do after she joined the Military Police?

This one-shot, from Annie's perspective, explores the possibility that Annie was given a week's leave courtesy of the police brigade upon joining. With nowhere to go home to, and no particular desire to play tourist within the walls she is attempting to destroy, where would she choose to spend her free time? Chronologically, this is set in the days immediately after the branch selection ceremony, a few weeks before the 57th expedition beyond the walls.

No direct appearance by Armin in this story—consider it a guest appearance by everyone's favorite lady titan shifter. Yet again, I've indulged in my habit of doing what justice to minor characters I can.

I also hope this tale, to a degree, does something to explain the deeper story behind why Annie spared Armin's life during the Scouting Legion's expedition.

I've got a great idea for the sixth chapter, but writing it will take some time, and university classes are starting again in earnest. I'll work on it as much as I can, and hopefully it will be well worth the wait! Thanks for reading, and please favorite and follow!

OOOOO

A lone girl in military uniform wove through the mid-afternoon crowd filling the city streets. Her blonde head barely turned as she walked past the busy shops and the crowds of citizens clustered around news bulletins and livestock auctions, nor did her blue eyes acknowledge the flamboyant beckoning of the street vendors as she passed.

Annie had expected Karanes to look quite similar to the city of Trost; to her surprise, they couldn't have been more different. Both cities were located along Wall Rose, populous, and economically important, after all—yet Trost's long, ordered apartment blocks, wide avenues, and tall stone bell towers were nowhere to be found. In retrospect, Annie should have known this would be the case. Trost's rich merchant trade, fed by its location on the banks of the Hermiha River, had left its mark on that city. Karanes, however, was built on its agriculture, and she had seen nothing but a vast expanse of crops and mills during her wagon trip through the district's lands behind Wall Rose. Instead, Karanes's structures were slim and squat, built by hand and as unique as their inhabitants. The town houses were wood, white-walled, and timber-framed, and its streets were crooked, lined with market stalls. To Annie, the city's atmosphere felt close-knit and homey—like an assemblage of village towns.

It reminded her of Shiganshima.

Fear. True fear. Dashing with Bertholt through ruined, bloody streets. Dodging the outstretched fingers of mindless titans. Running past grieving families and wide-eyed soldiers readying cannons. The sounds—screaming, crying, yelled orders, the panicked yells of those searching for loved ones. Packed evacuation boats where the two of them had sat shoulder to shoulder with their weeping, fearful victims. A nightmare, but the setting had been the same as the one she found herself in now—the streets of Shiganshima and Karanes had been built from the same cobbles, bordered by the same timber homes and low stone walls, marked by the same hand-painted shop signs…

The familiar agony of her guilt redoubled, subjecting her heart to a fresh spasm. Yet it was just a ghost of the remorse Annie had felt on that first day of the Trost clean-up operation, when she'd stood over a small, unrecognizable corpse and struggled to hold back a flood of tears.

A weeklong leave upon graduation was a privilege unique to the new recruits of the Military Police. This period of leave afforded to its new members was truly a cunning political move on the part of the police brigade, not to mention a luxury that most soldiers could only dream of. Trainees that joined the Garrison were not given the opportunity to return home before they were dispatched to their new station, while those that joined the Scouting Legion were sent immediately to that branch's headquarters for intensive additional training. Thus, only the freshly-minted soldiers of the Military Police, splendid in their uniform emblazoned with the legendary unicorn, ever returned home after graduation to spend time with their families. There, they attracted admiration and envy throughout the streets of their home villages everywhere they walked. Combined with the prestige of graduating at the top of their trainee class, it was only natural that the common people—at least those that didn't know any better—viewed the Military Police Brigade with such respect.

After all, unlike the other branches, the easygoing police could very much afford to spare its new recruits for a week. In contrast, the day they had left at age twelve to become trainees was often the last that many families ever saw of sons and daughters that joined the Scouting Legion. Small wonder that the cloak bearing the wings of freedom was so associated with controversy.

Annie, however, was met with kind, respectful stares as she crossed streets and walked along rows of shops and houses. Eyes would flick to the unicorn patches on her shoulders and breast, and people would smile, wondering which lucky family of the city could boast of such an accomplished daughter. Children stopped playing to watch this soldier pass by, their round faces frozen in awestruck expressions. A girl sawing at a stubborn cut of meat in a butcher's shop looked up at her briefly with a gaze marked by envy before turning back to her bloody hands and knife. Boys around her age glanced up and down her figure, some appreciative, others dismissive.

She found all of the attention extremely uncomfortable, yet she felt more uncomfortable still whenever she stopped to ask for directions.

"Pardon me, do you know where I can find the Carolinas' home?"

That was when the smiles died, the same flicker of understanding passing across each pair of eyes whenever Annie asked that question. A total of just under eight hundred soldiers had died during both battles for Trost, including many trainees and soldiers of the Garrison from Karanes, and most people of the city knew of somebody who had lost a loved one. So this girl from the Military Police, it seemed, was just someone else trying to find the family of a friend, a comrade, perhaps a lover now dead.

Over and over again, the workers, the tradesmen, the shopkeepers that Annie asked solemnly informed her that sadly, they did not know where the Carolinas lived. She was given a promising lead by a priest of the wall cult, only to find herself at the wrong home—a happy, bustling household where a family with six children called the Carolines lived.

As she turned away from the family's chatty grandmother, Annie wondered yet again why she had come.

She had no home to return to.

Still, she could have spent her week of freedom in Hermiha, or even traveled to Stohess early. She could have walked the boulevards, ornate bridges, and plazas of the rich Wall Sina cities, perhaps spending some of her military pay on a hearty meal or two. She could alternatively have spent her time productively, using her free time and new privileges of military access to further her information-collecting missions. Yet, she had chosen instead to pay for the ride by mail caravan to Wall Rose's easternmost settlement, a city with little recreational appeal, to which she had no connection…

Here she was, wandering the streets of Karanes in the late afternoon sun with only a family name for guidance. For the first time in years, she had no orders to follow, no training regimen or curfew to adhere by. If anything, she desperately missed the structure, the constant demands of some task that she could occupy her mind with. She could only look on as she passed masses of people doing things that she had never experienced—children clustered around a corner candy booth licking sweets, a girl sitting on the steps of her home squinting at a lesson book, a father and son playing some game with wooden pieces. The smells changed from block to block, neighborhood to neighborhood—cured meat, tanned leather, livestock, the smoke of wood stoves and hearths.

She still couldn't shake the image of Shiganshima from her head.

Her legs had begun to tire from all the walking when she finally found the help she was looking for at a cobbler's shop along the central road of the city. An older man, with graying hair and a face set with the sort of kind wrinkles that only a lifetime of smiling could bring about, stood from his workbench, stepped into the street, and pointed her towards the right section of the city. Of all the people she had met so far, his expression had been the only one that had not darkened upon hearing her question. Rather, he had nodded understandingly, his eyes warm and twinkling. Before she had left his storefront, he had explained that he had a daughter in the Scouting Legion.

The sun had fallen behind the level of the inner gate by the time Annie arrived at the two-story house with the green door that the cobbler had described. The road in this neighborhood was not even completely paved—soft dirt yielded slightly beneath her boots as she rounded the corner. The houses were draped in the shadow of the inner wall, and the street seemed subdued despite the small but loud crowd at the draper's shop midway down the block.

That was where Annie froze.

What was she thinking? Why had she come here, of all places? What did she want? Why was she here, in front of the house where Mina Carolina had grown up? How had she gotten here without thinking? Was it a need to honor the memory of a girl who had died too young, too early? Was it her own guilt, her ever-living horror at what she was helping others to do?

Annie was afraid—no, terrified—of herself, of whatever had possessed her to make this journey. She became aware of the strong, growing urge telling her to turn and walk away from this foolishness. Inexplicably, she remained there, rooted to the corner, eyes fixed on the squat house with the green door with the drying clothes strung across the street from an upper window. It was a summer afternoon, but Annie felt profoundly cold.

Had she lost her senses completely? It had been beyond stupidity to come here—what a tremendous waste of the caravan fees and of her own time. How had she ever let her emotions get the better of her like this?

Outwardly, she'd always been the most distant of them all. Had her father been watching them this entire time, she would have seemed like the best of the young warriors—completely detached from their enemies, emotionless and ruthless, utterly dedicated to their mission. In reality, however, it was Bertholt that had always felt the greatest sense of resolve. He'd been the one strong enough to laugh and joke with the others while planning with Annie and Reiner how they would breach the gates of Wall Rose at Trost. Annie, however, had done her best to avoid others primarily out of fear, not just out of cold necessity. Despite her father's constant mantra to shun all attachments to those within the walls, she'd found it just as difficult as Reiner had to maintain the mask. She'd been the one that had accidentally revealed something about their past, when she'd mentioned her martial arts training in passing. She'd gone out of her way to offer to train Eren in her fighting techniques. She'd even sought to convince the other trainees not to join the Scouting Legion—out of a genuine concern for their lives, and partly out of her horror at the prospect of having to face them in battle.

"Those of you who choose to join the Legion will participate in a scouting expedition outside the walls one month from now," she remembered the Scouting Legion's commander declaring. He'd already looked like a ghost in the glittering torchlight.

Armin, Jean, Connie … she kept telling herself that she could bring herself to kill them all if it came to that. After all, all of them without exception would die anyway when the walls inevitably fell. Three weeks from today, though, would she really feel nothing when the time came to erase Christa beneath her heel, or when she was forced to snatch Sasha from the air as the mountain girl swung in to attack the nape of her titan's neck? Almost every night since she'd been informed of the expedition, and ever since she'd learned that twenty of her classmates had joined the Scouting Legion, she'd lain awake trying her best not to think about who she'd have to kill or how they would have to die. They were doomed, she reminded herself. They were all dead already. The walls had to fall.

Yet look where she was now…

The crowd outside the draper's had noticed her presence, and Annie saw the shoppers glancing at her furtively with mixed expressions. Their stares were just enough to return the feeling to Annie's legs, and she willed herself to step away. There was nothing she could gain from staying here, much less from walking up to knock on this door that she'd traveled hundreds of miles to reach. Instead of taking a few steps back, however, Annie's feet carried her forwards involuntarily. She wondered vaguely if she were dreaming.

Suddenly, a voice came from the porch of the house on Annie's side of the street, "Are you looking for someone, dear?"

Annie spun to see Mina's mother standing up from where she'd been sitting with two other women on the deck, cups of tea before them on a small table.

Annie had recognized her instantly. Mina's mother had Mina's black hair and the same grey eyes, though they were shaped differently. She was also short—just a little over Annie's height. Mina must have been taller than her. A dirty apron was tied around her neck.

Annie became aware that her own eyes were wide, and that the feeling had vanished from her fingers and toes.

She could have escaped easily with a polite but evasive answer, stepped away never to return. Instead, Annie swallowed, her mouth dry, and asked quietly,

"Are you Mina Carolina's mother?"

The woman froze, then nodded stiffly. Her face was turning white as she put a hand to her heart and said in a subdued voice, "I am, yes. May I suggest… that we talk at my house…?"

Annie nodded, her heart pounding, then followed as Mina's mother walked down the steps to lead the young soldier across the street to the building with the green door.

OOOOO

Mina's house was crowded but comfortable. Recalling what Mina had told her about her family, Annie remembered that Mina's father was long dead, a victim of the great epidemic. Her mother made a small living as a washerwoman. Indeed, almost every square foot of space not occupied by furniture was crowded with bags and baskets of dirty and clean clothes, stacked in organized piles along the sides of the rooms, and more bags hung from the ceiling and walls. Judging by the quantity of dirty clothing filling the house, she had fallen far behind on the washing in the last weeks. A clear area had been left around the dining room's hearth, table, and stove.

The room was extremely warm, and Annie removed her leather uniform jacket before sitting down in the chair that she'd been offered. Mina's mother had pulled another chair back from the table, yet she remained standing, her face and posture uneasy and marked by her recent grief.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs leading to the second floor. Annie turned to see a young girl, perhaps eight or nine, peer timidly into the dining room before vanishing back upstairs. She was a shade lighter-haired than Mina had been, but the resemblance was unmistakable.

"Mina's sister Susanne," Mina's mother said softly.

She looked back at her young visitor, her grey eyes studying Annie with a wary gaze. She wiped her hands nervously on her apron, even though her palms were already dry and very clean. Mrs. Carolina took several steps towards the stove. "You must be hungry. Can I offer you anything to eat?"

"No thank you, I've already eaten," Annie lied.

Mina's mother nevertheless rummaged about the counter, collecting several containers. She opened the oven door, removing a roll of bread from several loaves stored inside. Walking around the table to Annie's side, she placed the plate in front of the girl, adding a small helping of precious butter from a jar.

Annie felt overwhelmed at the gesture. That spoonful of butter was worth more than what Mina's mother had likely earned all day. She looked up at the older woman and murmured what must have been an unintelligible thank-you. Suddenly embarrassed, Annie hoped dearly that her expression had conveyed at least some of the gratitude that she felt.

Mrs. Carolina seemed to acknowledge Annie's bungled thanks, yet her eyes, while very kind, were clouded with indecipherable emotion as they looked down at her. That was when Annie suddenly remembered that Mina had sat in this very chair countless times, eating from this same table. She had likely helped her mother with the cooking, tended the hearth and the stove in winter, worked side-by-side with her family to organize, stack, and hang the washing…

Was Annie causing Mina's family pain with her visit? Had she inadvertently reopened the still-fresh wounds of recent grief by reminding Mina's mother of her lost daughter?

"You must be one of Mina's friends?" Mrs. Carolina chose that moment to ask.

Annie nodded up at her. Inside, she flinched at the question. Mina had been beyond a doubt a friend to her… but had she ever truly been a friend to Mina?

When Annie replied, she was surprised at how strange her own voice sounded. "I knew Mina since our first day of training."

Mina's mother let out a small sigh, and her eyes glazed over for a moment. Suddenly, Annie had a strong feeling that the older woman was lost in the memory of the day Mina had left for the trainee corps—the last day she had ever seen her daughter. A long moment passed.

"What's your name, dear?"

Annie swallowed. "Annie Leonhart."

"Annie…" Mrs. Carolina repeated. She placed a hand on the tabletop as though to steady herself. Her gray eyes stared once more into Annie's.

"I can't thank you enough for coming here, Annie…" she began, "I thought that I would never find out… the families of the dead almost never hear anything, and the military only cares enough to post the lists of names…" Her voice broke.

Struck, Annie tried to imagine what it might have been like to stare up at the bulletin of names, hoping desperately that the name of your oldest daughter would be nowhere to be found. Few things could possibly be as cruel as believing that your child was alive and happy, only to learn that all your worst fears had come to pass and that your beloved baby was gone forever, never to return. Upon seeing that name written among the lists of the dead, you were forced in a single instant to relinquish irrevocably the whole set of dreams and hopes you had ever imagined. Mrs. Carolina would never open the door to greet her daughter, now grown, standing on the doorstep proudly in uniform. She would never watch as Mina earned a promotion before an applauding audience of fellow soldiers. She would never see Mina marry a husband on a bright summer's day, nor would she live to see Mina care for her tenderly and lovingly in her old age.

Looking up at the older woman, Annie could see the toll of these realizations written clearly across her features. Mrs. Carolina was still young, no more than forty, yet her eyes could have belonged to someone far older. Her face, pale and ghostlike, made her look as though a part of the mother had died with the daughter.

Annie reflected numbly that if she herself were to die behind these walls, her own father might well never learn of her fate. He would go on waiting until the end of his days, ever consumed with guilt, hoping for a reunion and for words of forgiveness that would never come…

Had Mina's mother begged Mina too to promise that she would return home?

Mina's mother had recollected herself, her eyes shining. She gestured to the plate sitting in front of Annie, urging her, "Please, have some bread. There's no need to be polite."

At her insistence, Annie broke off the end of her loaf of bread, spread a small amount of butter on it with her fingertip, and took a bite. The black rye bread was warm, rich, and flavorful, hearty yet not too coarse. For a girl who had lived almost her entire life on military and refugee rations, this was far and beyond the best bread she had ever tasted.

Annie turned to Mrs. Carolina. "Thank you… it's excellent."

A small smile briefly rested on the young mother's face before numb sadness overcame it once more.

As Annie ate another piece of bread in silence, she became acutely aware of the nature of the conversation that was about to happen. There were questions that Mina's mother was waiting anxiously to ask, things that she wanted to hear. At this moment, however, Annie could barely piece together how she had ended up here in this house, much less what she planned to say to Mina's parent. Suddenly, Annie felt profoundly guilty that she was here, sitting in Mina's place, eating her mother's food, while Mina was nothing but a few handfuls of ash and bone indistinguishable from the remains of her comrades, buried deep in the pit they'd dug in the land behind Wall Maria. For a horrifying moment, she had a waking dream that the bread was made of ashes, that she was chewing on the charred remnants of fallen soldiers. The rye bread instantly lost all flavor in Annie's mouth, and she struggled with a powerful urge to spit it out and run madly from this house of grief.

Feeling Mrs. Carolina's eyes on her, however, Annie managed to conjure up enough of her trained stoicism and resolve to hide the signs of her discomfort. Fighting against the tight lump in her throat, Annie swallowed the mouthful of bread with a shudder.

Bent over the table, Annie breathed with difficulty, her chest tight and her stomach churning with nausea. Her face felt totally numb, a prickling sensation spreading painfully across her cheeks and around her eyes.

She remembered. She remembered walking past Nack Tius's mangled body, across pavestones stained brown with blood. Her boot had brushed the broken blade of a 3DMG sword, pushing it slightly across the ground with a metallic clink. Broken windows. A collapsed wall where a titan had fallen and evaporated. That was when she'd seen it—the same pigtails, the same slim figure, the same collared shirt—but a gaping hole in place of the pretty, kind face she'd known in life… Annie had wanted to scream, to look away, but she had stood there motionless, letting the sight burn itself forever into her memory…

Annie didn't look at Mina's mother. She stared straight across the table at the lit hearth and murmured the same words she'd gasped out that day, then later that night as a pyre had reached towards the stars:

"I'm sorry… I'm so sorry…"

She heard Mrs. Carolina sniff, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw the woman waver, clutching the side of the table tightly.

"I don't know what to say…" Annie began, only to hear her voice trail off into silence. For a moment, all she could hear was the crackling of the fireplace and the soft rustle as Mrs. Carolina raised a handkerchief to her face.

Finally, Annie said softly, "I was the one that found her afterwards."

A hand still clutching the square of cloth suddenly clutched Annie's shoulder, its grip gentle yet somehow desperate.

"How did she die?" Mina's mother asked. "Please… I beg you not to lie to me about Mina… tell me the truth about what happened…"

Annie stared at her, her eyes wide. How could she tell her the truth? Why had she begun by choosing to talk about this, of all things?

"I wasn't in Mina's platoon that day," Annie answered slowly, "but I heard the story from her squadmate…"

She looked away from Mina's mother. There was no way that she could bear looking into her eyes any longer, not when she, Annie, had coldly agreed to the plan that Reiner had put forth on the night before the graduation ceremony. She, Annie, had distracted the sentries while Bertholt had crossed the wall to break the gate, letting in the titans that had killed Thomas, Mina, Marco, Nack, Franz, and so many others...

"…her squad was maneuvering near a group of titans in the city," Annie continued. She was staring determinedly at a stool in the corner, intently avoiding Mrs. Carolina's gaze. "A titan caught her wire, and she lost control and hit a wall. Then…"

Mina's mother gasped and put the handkerchief to her mouth, as though she were witnessing the events firsthand. Involuntarily, Annie looked up to see her face turning white, her shoulders trembling.

"…then the same titan grabbed her around the chest, and—" Annie had to avert her eyes once more as she finished, "—it bit her through the head. She died immediately." Or at least Annie hoped she had. It had been a double mercy. Not only had Mina died quickly, without excessive suffering, but it had been impossible for Annie to tell what her last expression of terror and despair might have been. Yet that gaping wound had been even worse in many ways…

One night during training, Mina, sitting in her usual spot at supper across from Annie, had noticed that the other trainee was being particularly unresponsive, and she'd begun asking Annie questions, wondering if something was wrong. Irritated, Annie hadn't answered, and Mina had switched tacks to trying to elicit any kind of response from her. Determinedly, she'd begun making progressively sillier faces across the table, doing her very best to provoke laughter or even a smile from the other girl. The entire cafeteria had eventually caught on—an amused Ymir had moved to their table to watch, smirking. Annie remembered Reiner whispering something to Armin, who had shaken his head wryly in reply. Finally, an especially distorted expression by Mina had broken Annie's composure, and she'd let out a single chuckle, upon which the room had burst into cheers and applause.

Annie came to her senses and noticed that Mina's mother had turned to the window. She seemed to be focused on the darkening street outside, but her eyes indicated that her mind was somewhere far away. Tears glistened on her face.

"She was well loved by everyone," Annie offered hesitantly, "and very brave—"

Mina's mother cut her off. "Her last letter said… she really was going to join the Scouting Legion, wasn't she?" Her voice shook.

Annie did not reply. After a few moments, Mrs. Carolina turned to her and asked quietly, "Was she happy in training, especially in those last weeks?"

Annie nodded, folding her arms on the table. "Everyone was. Everyone was excited to finally graduate…"

She raised her head. "Mina was usually cheerful. She was always encouraging and friendly to others, and she worked very hard to do her best."

Mina had never been near the top of their class. Her 3D maneuver gear skills and academic testing had been average, though her level of physical fitness had been high. Her hand-to-hand scores in particular were quite poor, and she'd never been much of a leader. Nevertheless, she would have made an excellent soldier—cool-headed, resourceful, committed, and quite brave. She'd always confronted each training exercise, no matter how dangerous or intimidating, with the same expression of grim resolution and determination.

As Annie continued speaking, her mind wandered ever further back through their years of training together. Three years—the time seemed to have passed by so fast, yet simultaneously, it felt as though the first day of service had taken place an age ago…

"She made many friends—I think she was very happy in the trainee corps," Annie recalled. "She almost never complained about anything. Except for the food, which we all hated…" She felt something like a smile on her lips for an instant.

She remembered a night when she'd lain awake in her bunk, listening to the other girls gossiping away. When Hannah had attacked Annie's training attitudes and icy personality, Mina had risen to defend her, asserting against general disbelief that Annie was actually a warmer person than she seemed, and that she could even be funny from time to time. Annie hadn't been hurt in the slightest by hearing what others thought of her, but she had been touched somewhat by Mina's insistent loyalty. What had she, Annie, ever done to earn such esteem in Mina's eyes?

Another memory swam to the surface of Annie's mind, and she added, "Mina talked about home and her family a lot to the rest of us. She was hoping that she'd be stationed in Karanes, so that she could help look after things."

Mina's mother had placed a hand over her heart again. "Bless her…" Visibly swaying where she stood, she exclaimed softly, "she was always such a responsible child… especially after Otto died…" Mrs. Carolina closed her eyes.

Annie's conversations with Mina, if you could call them that, had always been so one-sided. Perhaps rightly confident that Annie would never reveal a secret, Mina had sat alongside her on many a night confiding her dreams and fears to her fellow trainee. Her hidden crush on Jean Kirschstein, her distant hope of joining Annie among the top 10 of the class, her worry that she would fail a crucial exercise and be sent home… Annie had sat and listened, never sharing in kind.

…And then there had been the constant compliments. Mina had raved constantly about Annie's hair, her hand-to-hand skills, her blade technique, even praising Annie's no-nonsense attitude as refreshing and honest.

Yet through it all, Mina had always respected Annie's solitary nature. It had seemed as though the girl possessed some sixth sense that prompted her to leave Annie alone most of the time, only to swoop in and keep her company the moment she detected that Annie wouldn't mind.

Suddenly, Mina's mother straightened, frowning slightly as though something had occurred to her. "Is your family from around Karanes too, Annie? Is that how the two of you became friends?"

Caught by surprise, Annie couldn't reply for an instant. Thoughts of her father and of the simple log home in which she'd grown up raced momentarily through her mind. Then her honed mental defense returned, and she clung tightly once more to the familiar lies that had long protected her.

Looking down at the rough wooden floorboards, Annie shook her head. "I grew up outside Wall Rose. My family is dead."

Mina's mother looked away as well. "I'm so sorry to hear that…"

Then, realization lit her eyes, and she turned to stare directly at Annie, shocked. "So you used your enlistment leave… and you came all this way—just to find our family…?"

It was true. It was undeniably true. In the time that she'd been sitting at the table, Annie had finally figured out why a part of her had felt such a strong need to come here, against all logic and against her own better judgment.

"I never had the chance to thank her," Annie said simply, "for everything. For being a friend to me."

Were those tears, suddenly threatening to flood her eyes? Her heart felt as though an invisible hand had wrenched it into a quarter turn.

No. Annie couldn't show tears. She couldn't afford to show weakness. It wasn't a matter of her composure, but rather her fear of what would happen if she couldn't maintain it. If Annie started crying here, or showed the slightest outward sign of anything more than the most distant grief or sadness, the kind-looking woman standing in the room with her might be moved to place a hand on her back to comfort her, or even to envelop her in a hug. Resolutely, Annie stared with even greater intensity at the crooked wooden planks, hiding her face from view as she fought to regain control of herself. She hoped desperately that Mina's mother would choose that moment to turn her back, so that she could mop at her eyes with her sweatshirt's sleeve.

Annie had done her duty to Mina. She could dash for the door now without any serious regrets. In a day, she could be hundreds of miles from here, well on her way towards resuming her grim mission without further doubts or distractions. Deep inside, Annie felt now that coming here had been right, yet enough was enough. Far more blood would be spilled by her hands in the weeks and months and years to come, and if she failed to learn to come to terms with that reality soon…

But by Maria, what had they done? Mina was dead and gone, irrevocably gone. All three of them had always known that there were many within the walls that deserved far better than death and suffering… Mina most of all! Was their secret agenda, their enmity with the high powers within the walls, really worth such a cost? Too young to die… too good to die… too loved by friends and family… They had not only robbed Mina of her future, but also subjected her to the most terrible death that this harsh world had to offer. She had died still almost a child, remembered only by those close to her, never to see the tiled roofs of her hometown again.

How many innocent lives like hers was their mission worth?

She felt as though the surface of her entire body was painfully numb. She couldn't feel her fingers, even as she clenched them into fists. Her lungs felt like they were in spasms, and her breath came in forced shivers.

There had been no use resisting at all. In defiance of her best efforts, a few solitary tears fell from Annie's eyes onto the wood floor, shattering like glass as they reached the ground.

Footsteps echoed through the room, and a pair of warm arms wrapped themselves around Annie's shoulders. Her face, pressed against that worn apron, was immediately assaulted by the smell of smoke, freshly baked bread, a hint of mint tea…

Almost as immediately, Annie felt a wave of emotion rise up inside her. This well-meaning physical contact hurt more than anything Annie had ever experienced. A raging guilt was bursting into flame within her chest, scorching and consuming her gut with a sharp, piercing pain. Guilt beyond description. She was numb with guilt, her limbs sluggish and unresponsive, barely able to feel the arms holding her. It dawned on Annie that not only had she been an accomplice to Mina's death, but she was now accepting this embrace from her mother as a salve for her own selfish regret. Her remorse grew once more, churning and bubbling, and Annie struggled desperately to contain its outward signs, disguising her self-horror as mere grief.

She was a terrible person. Even the world's coldest murderers and criminals shrank from the thought of facing their victims' families, yet she, Annie, had come here to be held by the same arms that had gently rocked an infant Mina Carolina.

One day, they would all find out what she had done, what she was, and when that day came... Even this kind woman would recoil in loathing at the memory that she had once welcomed a monster into her home.

Knowing what she did, how could she keep sitting there, mute, passively accepting Mrs. Carolina's best efforts to comfort her?

The worst part of it was, a lonely part of Annie was fervently wishing that this moment would never end. She no longer had any memory of what her own mother's embrace had felt like. The last time that anybody had ever held her like this, her father had been clutching her on the night of her departure, as though he could keep her with him by the sheer force of his love and worry. The warm arms wrapped around her neck allowed her to imagine that, for an instant in time, someone inside the walls cared for her, understood her.

She could even almost begin to pretend that she was being forgiven.

At the same time, another part of her reeled, revolted at the depths of her pathetic delusion. Nobody had ever understood who Annie really was—not any of the other trainees, not Reiner, not Bertholt, not even her own father. She was utterly alone, just like she'd always been. Lost, struggling to survive, and wondering if there was even a shred of meaning to this existence.

Rye flour, laundered clothes, a mother's arms—Annie, trapped in Mrs. Carolina's arms, inhaled the scents of a world she'd never known. A world that she'd shattered forever with grief and loss. Together, the smells hinted at the true extent, the vast, incomprehensible sheer magnitude of the countless life experiences that she and her fellow titan-shifters had torn apart, destroying the innumerable, infinite loves, dreams, and memories of thousands upon thousands.

Where would it end?

OOOOO

Annie left the house early the next morning, before the sun had risen. In the waning hours of the moonless night, the streets of Karanes were cold and lifeless. Every window was dark, and it felt to her as though the whole city was holding its breath, frozen in time apart from the single living girl crossing the street, a knapsack slung across her back by one shoulder.

The dull thud of her boots on the dirt and pavestones echoed down the road. Once again, Annie was alone, returned to the familiar half-comfort of her usual solitude. On a sudden whim, she turned her head to look at the eastern boundary wall. It rose, blacker than the night, drawing the line of its ramparts against the dark blue of the sky. Annie knew that, if she wished, she could scale Wall Rose in less than a minute in her titan form. In six hours, she could be at Wall Maria's southern gate. She could be back on her father's doorstep in less than a day. Home. No more mission, no more deception, no more death.

But that was a total fantasy.

Annie stared up at the stars for a long moment. Beyond the wall, the names of the constellations were different, and she remembered listening with amusement to Armin as he'd pointed them out to everyone one night, calling them by unfamiliar names, recounting their odd stories.

That one had been a dog, which had waited for its lost master night after night, until angels and spirits had lifted it into the sky out of pity.

The group of stars below it had been a queen that had leapt from the wall after the death of her son—the dull cluster of lights surrounding her represented her tears, suspended alongside her in her eternal fall.

Annie knew the Queen instead as the Martyr—a young hero who had fallen long ago in the first war against the titans. She lay in the heavens surrounded by her shimmering blood, refusing to die until she saw some small hope that mankind would one day overcome its foe. On that day, it was said, the fourteen stars in that part of the sky would fall, and fourteen heroes would be born on earth to reconquer the world.

Those stars had not moved in two hundred years.

_Annie, you're actually a kind person, aren't you?_

At the corner, Annie looked back briefly at the house where Mina Carolina had grown up. Annie had left a note on the table, together with the small collection of Mina's things that she'd brought to Karanes—a brush, a battered pen, some blue hair ribbons, a folding knife, an embroidered coin purse. She hoped that the objects would bring whatever hoped-for closure that her own words had not succeeded in providing. That box of belongings had followed Mina from home three years ago. Annie was sure that Mina would have liked knowing that it had been returned.

In the end, however, Annie had left one object to herself as a keepsake. The graduation badge that Mina would have received sat, cold and angular in Annie's uniform pocket.


	6. Chapter 6: The Legion of the Year 846 p1

"_**Armin imagined his grandfather amidst the bloodbath. Had his grey head turned in the hour of death to watch humanity's strongest soldier carving a swath through the battle? Had the sight inspired faint hope in his heart even as he stumbled onwards, shoulder-to-shoulder with the ranks of the doomed legion of the year 846?"—Chapter 1, Just What Else Needs to be Thrown Aside?**_

**Apologies for the delay—this story has spiraled beyond the one-shot I originally envisioned, and it now looks like it will be a two-part episode with a special guest cast!**

**We all know that one year after the fall of Wall Maria, the central government organized an infamous operation to recapture the lost territory. Two hundred and fifty thousand former residents of the Wall Maria lands were sent to reclaim the outer walls, led by soldiers of the Scouting Legion. From the anime, we also know that in the year 850, only a handful of members of the Scouting Legion were given Erwin's full and complete trust during the operation to capture the female titan. These soldiers—Nanaba, Mike, Levi, and Hanji—were trusted on the basis of the fact that they had been serving continuously in the Legion for over five years, having joined the branch before the destruction of the gate at Shiganshima. In addition, we know that Erwin, as well as Keith Shadis, were also Scouting Legion veterans since well before the fall of Wall Maria.**

**I have always been struck by these facts, as I can only draw one conclusion from the canonical timeline, which is that Keith Shadis, Erwin, Levi, Mike, Hanji, and Nanaba almost certainly were combatants in the ill-fated expedition to retake Wall Maria in the Year 846. This possibility has always fascinated me, given that they had to have been among the few hundred survivors from an army that had numbered in the hundreds of thousands. How did they survive? What was the battle like?**

**To me, writing this story also serves to answer another question about Levi's backstory. When did he become famous across the human territory for his skills in combat? To me, the answer is simple—this, the expedition of 846, simply must have been the battle in which Levi earned his reputation as humanity's greatest soldier.**

**With the publication of the A Choice With No Regrets manga series, some of the story here may eventually be proved non-canon. Until then, however, I hope it provides an interesting take on an episode of the Scouting Legion's past that not that many writers have ever looked at.**

**As always, please leave feedback! I hope you enjoy reading!**

**Chapter 6: The Legion of the Year 846 (Part 1 of 2):**

On the day the walls finally fell, the final stand of humanity would look exactly like this.

All Levi could hear was the nightmarish cacophony of screams and battle orders, punctuated incessantly by the hisses and pops of maneuver gear and the crashing of titan footsteps. Cries of pain and panic echoed near and far, their voices young and old, male and female. Horses echoed the vocalizations of their masters, whinnying and neighing as they wheeled and reared amidst the battle. Then there was the constant sound of tearing flesh and cracking bone as soldier after soldier was erased between rows of great teeth. Every so often, the battlefield shook with a great roar as a titan finally fell, annihilating the ground where its lifeless corpse landed. Beneath this earsplitting roar of noise, the background was filled with the impact of thousands of feet, boots, and hooves, the rattle of maneuver gear, the clink of weapons and stirrups, the rustle of flags and clothing, and the gasps, coughs, groans, and excited breathing of humanity's army.

To the eye, the battle was a blur of vibrant color. Blue sky. Green grass. White clouds. Red and crimson blood, thick in the air. Great pillars of titan flesh. Silver blades and speartips. Dust of all kinds—grey, brown, tan, and even blood-red—swirled like an ocean of waves in the air. Flags, green, with the white-and-blue Wings of Freedom, flew, dipping and rising amidst the melee. The army itself was a patchwork of colors. Everywhere, shirts and cloaks that were rose-colored, blue, yellow, or white crowded together beneath heads of hair that were black, brown, blond, and gray.

As far as Levi could see, this great mass of humanity swarmed beneath the titans that stood over them like a field of towers.

On his left, an aberrant crashed mindlessly though a wall of pikemen, steam disgorging from its wounds as it grabbed man after man to be devoured, oblivious to the stabbing spears. Nearer, Levi saw a crowd of humans overpowering a three-meter-class, pinning it to the ground while three spearmen gouged away at its neck in a frenzy of rage and panic.

Even the stench of battle was terrible. Everywhere Levi rode, it swirled in the air as a mix of apocalyptically foul smells. Human sweat. Blood. Excrement. Urine. Horses. The atmosphere was worse than the alleys of the poorest slums. People fought, whirled, ran, and died within this odor of a slaughterhouse, so overpowering that it seemed an instrument of death itself.

A fellow soldier of the Scouting Legion, or perhaps a comrade from the Garrison, fell cartwheeling through the air to the ground, blood spraying from amputated limbs and a torn neck. The corpse hit the ground with a thud of flesh and the crunch of metal as the body crushed the maneuver gear it wore on impact.

Perversely, it was precisely the opportunity that Levi had been waiting for. He spurred his horse forwards to the crumpled body and swung himself from the saddle, glancing rapidly from side to side for danger. His boots landed in the bloody grass, and he immediately knelt by the dead soldier, fingers scrambling to detach the gas canister from the undamaged side of the corpse's maneuver gear. His palm brushed the body's blood-soaked, still-warm torso as he yanked and pulled the tank of 3DMG propellant free, then rapidly attached the canister to his own gear. Next, he pulled out each of the dead soldier's unused blades, slotting them one after another into his own sheaths.

This was far from the first corpse that Levi had robbed of its belongings, nor had Levi been brought up a stranger to the sight of death, and so his movements were steady and sure where another scout's hands might have trembled. Yet at the same time, his heart was racing madly, fully aware of the death and chaos that swirled around him as he thrust the last steel blade into his maneuver gear's set of holsters. Without so much as a glance downwards at the body, he stood, mounted his horse, and set off through the aimless throng of spearmen at as fast of a gallop as he could manage.

"Somebody help—!" a voice cried some minutes later. Levi's head whirled to look just as the yell dissolved into a scream of pain.

An eight-meter-class suddenly loomed up in front of Levi as it straightened, pulling a bite from the dying human in its grasp. There was no need for Levi to use even a cubic millimeter of gas. He sprang up, standing with his feet planted on the saddle, then leapt from his horse on leg power alone, carving a deep slice of flesh from the corpulent titan's neck. Levi closed his eyes briefly as he fell back to earth, splashes of hot titan blood burning his face, neck, and hand as he hit the ground in a controlled roll, the reverberating crash of the titan's falling body echoing behind him. In a second, he had returned to his feet to grip the horn of his saddle as his horse rode back for him.

As he climbed onto his mount once more, his eyes briefly met those of a foot soldier standing nearby. The wretched pikeman's face was fixed in a mask of terror, yet his eyes stared at Levi, then at his maneuver gear with a look of mixed relief, anger, and jealousy. The two of them held the gaze for an instant, but then Levi was turning, riding onwards, his attention already fixed on the next titan.

OOOOO

He spurred his horse into a headlong charge towards a four-meter-class; he cut it down without leaving the saddle.

Levi rode on, passing through a cluster of discarded pikes and banners that protruded from the earth like blades of grass.

They hadn't even managed to make it halfway to Shiganshima, and Levi knew they never would.

The mission at its most basic had been simple. Marching forth from Wall Rose, the human army would proceed at the greatest possible speed directly to Shiganshima, its flanks guarded by the mobile maneuver-gear-equipped soldiers of the regular military. There, the bulk of the force would stand and fight to hold both sides of the breach while laborers worked to permanently seal the southernmost gate. Upon completion of the operation, the entire force was to return to Trost. In subsequent weeks and months, the army, supposedly reinforced by the full might of the entire human military, would be tasked with exterminating the thousands of titans now trapped in the Wall Maria territory, slowly reclaiming the lost land through a long, careful campaign.

Twenty-eight miles south of Trost, all forward progress had stopped.

They had always known that crowds of humans attracted titans. Soldiers that stayed in a group beyond the wall soon found themselves fighting three, then five, then six titans. And on Levi's first missions, before the fall of Wall Maria, back when the Legion had ventured into titan territory as a tightly clustered wedge of men and horses, they had always faced an ever-increasing number of giants that converged from seemingly every direction, inevitably forcing them to ride back for the wall.

But today…

The two titans were distracted, surrounded by a growing collection of ghastly corpses that littered the grass. Levi chose his anchor point, using the taller of the two giants as a center of rotation as he slew the other, then catapulted himself upwards into a slashing somersault that felled the first.

Two hundred and fifty thousand. Two hundred and fifty thousand civilians, barely trained to march and obey orders before they were handed crude spears and forced through the gate at Trost. The entire standing force of the Scouting Legion, three hundred soldiers strong, deployed for the offensive along with one thousand soldiers of the Garrison, backed by the two thousand graduates of the most recent trainee classes. By royal proclamation, branch no longer mattered, as each of the regular soldiers wore the cloak and insignia of the Scouting Legion—four thousand pairs of shoulders embroidered with the Wings of Freedom. An army of two hundred and fifty-four thousand—this mass of humanity stretched as far as the eye could see.

But just an hour's march from the walls, a curtain of smoke signals from the scout patrols had risen across the entire horizon. Red and black smoke trails—first several, then dozens, then countless signals, so many that they almost seemed to replace the sky as they curled and twisted. For a minute, the soldiers had simply watched as the fingers of smoke reached towards the clouds, their thin wispy lines winding, carefree, high in the air. Then, the first silhouettes had appeared on the horizon, and the greatest battle of the century had begun.

Frantic orders. A line of spearmen racing into formation as the ground thundered and shook. Gasps of shock and terror. Blades clearing sheaths with a metallic ring. The familiar surge of adrenaline, the familiar mad drumbeat within his chest. As the giants had closed to half a hundred paces of the battle line, a brief moment of calm had fallen upon the plain as thousands of men and women braced themselves behind long pikes. That calm was the first victim of the massacre, annihilated as the first half-dozen titans met the human legion in a resounding crash that had seemed to fracture the world itself.

Levi had since long lost track of how much time had passed since that cataclysmic moment of impact. Two hours. Three. Enough time, certainly, for him to have fully exhausted his supply of gas once. How many titans had he slain? He did not keep a count like many soldiers of the Scouting Legion did, and as morning had given way to the bright afternoon sun, his kills had mounted, surpassing first a dozen, then a score, before melting together into a bloody mire of fragmented impressions of combat.

A spearman blinded a stooping titan, providing the opening Levi needed to throw himself at its exposed neck. His tired knees protested as he landed toes-first in the grass.

It was a perfect nightmare. There wasn't a single tall structure in sight. The soldiers with maneuver gear had no choice but to fire their anchors into the titans themselves to launch their attacks before falling back to earth, clambering to their feet or onto horseback and throwing themselves into the air again and again. Under these circumstances, with options so limited and the ground so crowded with foot soldiers, squad-based tactics were impossible. Each soldier confronted their titan alone, perhaps in a pair if they were lucky, supported by just a handful of brave spear-thrusts from those on the ground. Woman after woman and man after man was snatched from the sky or plucked from the ground to a terrible fate.

The spearmen fighting on foot were even more unfortunate. All they could do was die by the scores as they stabbed viciously at the titans' legs and faces, attempting to distract the giants long enough for assistance to arrive from better-equipped soldiers.

Levi fought alone, riding through the melee, leaving an unknown, growing number of titan bodies in his wake.

OOOOO

Dirt and a mix of titan and human blood smeared together across the back of his hand when he moved to wipe the sweat from his brow. He returned the hand to his reins with a grimace.

Turning his head to survey the battlefield, Levi searched the horizon yet again for any survivors from the mixed squad of Scouting Legion members, Garrison soldiers, and fresh trainees that he'd been marching alongside that morning.

There, in the patch of brush near the rapidly disintegrating corpse of a thirteen-meter-class, lay the half-eaten body of the first trainee who had been killed. Jan, the Legion's supply officer, had vanished after launching himself into the air in pursuit of the aberrant responsible. Levi had not seen him in hours. The trainee carrying the spare gas canisters had been swallowed whole shortly afterwards, horse, gear, equipment, and all. Beyond, on the bloodstained hill, the middle-aged soldier of the Garrison had been slapped out of the air by a flailing titan arm—an unlucky death that had at least spared him from being devoured. Titans had interest only in the living.

One by one, the rest had fallen in battle or disappeared, their names unknown to him.

An earsplitting crack rang through the air as a skeletal titan blundered through a tree, splintering its trunk and sending up a plume of dust as the canopy of leaves collapsed onto the earth. The company of pikemen nearby backed away as the giant emerged from the cloud of suspended dirt, its bloodstained hands outstretched and reaching for the men in the front ranks. The titan's face contorted grotesquely as it opened its jaws, making a laconic sound that might have passed for a yawn.

They really did have the stupidest expressions.

With the casual confidence born of experience, Levi removed his feet from the stirrups, planted his heels on the back of the saddle, and stood slowly, keeping his balance as his horse galloped towards the fray, its back heaving and rocking. A quick glance to either side. No immediate secondary danger. A moment of careful aim, and his anchor was suddenly flying with a hiss of gas, embedding itself into the titan's hip. Levi could feel dozens of pairs of eyes watching him as he hit the triggers of his maneuver gear and rose skywards to commence his attack.

He pulled the first anchor free, firing a second directly into the nape of the titan's neck itself. As predicted, the titan wheeled right to face him. The barbed hook in its flesh tugged at his wire with the titan's sudden movement. Using the additional wire tension to further increase his acceleration, Levi swung himself into a carefully timed spin, his eyes already centered on the vulnerable flesh around his anchor point. His blades carved through titan fat and muscle, slaying the titan and freeing his anchor in the same action.

A third pull of a trigger, and Levi felt his rate of descent slow as the wire he'd fired into the falling titan's back arrested his fall. Soft dirt yielded beneath his military boots as he landed. Levi's dead adversary hit the ground a millisecond later with a shockwave that sent tremors through every joint in his body.

He winced. He'd felt another momentary ache shoot through his knees. Even with superb physical conditioning, a soldier with 3DMG could only keep fighting without rest for so long.

Thick steam was already rising from the titan corpse, and wisps of mist swirled upwards from his bloodstained blades. Levi was suddenly aware of the battle's oppressive heat, of the sweat drenching his undershirt beneath his uniform, of the hint of an acidic sensation in the muscles of his legs. Something brushed his cheek at that moment, and Levi flinched violently and instinctively before he realized that it was nothing but a falling leaf, drifting to the ground from the limbs of the shattered tree behind him.

Suddenly, the hubbub of incredulous exclamations from the nearby pikemen that had persisted in the wake of Levi's feat of arms gave way to multiple cries of warning, and Levi perceived the approaching thunder of another set of titan footsteps.

The reverberations shaking the ground were rapid and heavy. He spun, his fingers flying to the triggers of his maneuver gear, tensed. Then Levi saw it, and a genuine wave of panic shot through his entire body.

It was an aberrant, an agile crawler, heading straight for him on all fours. Levi was on foot, his horse over twenty meters away, and without a nearby surface to anchor to, he was completely out of options.

Ignoring the foot soldiers on either side, the aberration lunged towards him, jaws flashing open.

OOOOO

Levi had once read in a Scouting Legion report that veterans who had survived several missions tended to be light and shorter in stature. The paper had proposed several possible explanations, from the superior aerial acceleration of lighter soldiers, to their better endurance at full speed on horseback, to a correlation of petite physical size with natural caution or even cowardice.

These were factors, Levi conceded, but the truth was entirely different.

It was a tenet that Levi had painfully learned and taken to heart during the darkest days of his childhood. The short kids had always been the most dangerous.

A tall or strong youth growing up in the underground relied on their physical dominance over the weak to survive from day to day. The smaller children, however, had no choice but to find the will to fight, or die. The scrawny girls, the malnourished boys, the midgets, the cripples—they lost three out of every four fights, and many died alone, bruised, bleeding, a skull cracked or bones broken, in dark alleys or amidst garbage heaps. Most chose to give up their independence, living out their short lives as minions and slaves in exchange for any small, uncertain protection. Of those that refused to yield, most would die, hunted down without mercy. The survivors, however, not only found the resolve to live, but learned to hate the strong. They slept every night clutching a shiv for self-protection, and when they dreamed, they dreamed of vengeance. Every time they hid or ran from adults or bigger children, every time they were forced at knifepoint to hand over a hard-earned coin or crust of bread, they smoldered deep inside and imagined the excruciating torture that they would one day inflict on their oppressors. They planned the next fight in vicious, ruthless detail. Next time, they would wrench at a finger to break it. Next time, they would gouge at an eye. Next time, they would bite at flesh until they tore it free with their teeth.

Levi could have died like so many of the others; instead, he had survived, building his reputation upon rumor and legend until he finally became the one that was feared, the figure of strength and violence that was hated by the less fortunate.

Levi's skill with his blades and his maneuver gear was no natural talent—a truth that the other soldiers of the Scouting Legion utterly failed to understand. It was the product of a lifetime of merciless suffering. The monsters Levi fought beyond the walls were even slower, more predictable, and far less intelligent than the brutish enforcers of the merchants' guilds and crime gangs—those terrifying titans of his childhood. And so the giants died, grasping vainly at the flying soldier that eluded their fingertips even as they bled from the mortal gashes in their necks.

On many a night, Levi had found himself cornered against a slimy, filthy wall in the deepest part of the secret city. In that dark hour, when the weak boy was forced to fight, the leering thug or club-wielding bandit had soon learned to their danger that the small, the starving, the skinny child fought with a ruthlessness and a cunning that struck sudden terror into their heart before stilling it forever.

OOOOO

As the titan flew towards him with a gaping maw, Levi knew he was already dead.

Yet Levi had always refused to die quietly.


	7. Chapter 7: The Legion of the Year 846 p2

**Here it is! Finally! First, I would like to offer my sincerest apologies for the cliffhanger I ended the last chapter with. I wanted to dedicate a lot of time and attention to this portion of the story, and I hope you'll find that it was worth it.**

**I found my secondary characters in this chapter fascinating to write. How does one imagine a younger Hanji, still consumed with hatred for the titans that she will later study with sympathy? How might one contrast Keith Shadis's leadership style and personality with that of Erwin's?**

**For those of you reading A Choice With No Regrets, you'll find that I've omitted Isabel and Farlan from this story. Since that particular manga series isn't over yet, but since Isabel and Farlan are clearly no longer with us in Shingeki no Kyojin's main storyline itself, it's clear that they've died somewhere along the way. Because I don't know, and partially because I don't particularly like the characters, I've assumed that they were killed prior to the events of this chapter.**

**My love of minor characters also continues! I've always thought that Nanaba deserved more screen time. As for Erd's appearance, let's just say that for one to refrain from pissing oneself on a first expedition of this kind, you have to be a special kind of badass.**

**Another character made an appearance, and I hope it was clear who it was.**

**Finally, I tossed in a few really, really, really subtle tributes to Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars, haha. I'll be impressed if anybody can find them.**

**Thanks for reading, and as always, please leave feedback!**

**Chapter 7: The Legion of the Year 846 (Part 2 of 2):**

The titan was sliding across the ground mid-lunge, ploughing up the grass and soil with the force of its forward momentum as its teeth began to close. Levi whirled on his feet, cursing as he sheathed his swords and sprinted, taking two long bounds before throwing himself forward with all of his strength. Only the palest ghost of an adrenaline rush surged through his veins to aid him—the last weak endocrine impulse his drained body seemed capable of mustering on this day already so filled with mortal danger. His body seemed to move too slowly as he dove away from the growing shadow behind him.

He landed in the sweet-smelling grass.

The expected pain of having his legs severed by the aberrant's bite did not materialize. Just behind him, Levi heard the titan's teeth snap together with a deafening clack, missing his feet and ankles by what felt like millimeters.

Not today.

Immediately, Levi was up and running again, diving and rolling this time to his right. Panicked yells and gasps of horror from the onlooking soldiers filled the air as the titan missed him yet again, its head overshooting Levi and buffeting him with the turbulent air from its passage. Levi's own head was turning, frantically searching for his black mare. There it was, cantering away and whinnying in fear as it looked over its back at him. Too far away.

Levi could not run, and with this aberrant's agility and power, neither could he fight.

With a speed that only a hardened, desperate criminal could know and learn to master, Levi snatched the signal gun from his belt. He aimed and fired. Thick red smoke suddenly filled the air, billowing from the barrel of the pistol as the canister streaked through the air to strike the titan squarely in the face as it faced him. Levi dashed madly towards his horse. Simultaneously, one of the spearmen, in an act of spectacular bravery, raced forward to impale the aberrant's arm upon his pike. For his trouble, the beast erased him from existence with a quick bite that left only the man's legs and lower torso behind to crumple to the blood-flecked grass. Levi had not counted on the spearman's help. Between the twin distractions of the smoke signal and a pike through the forearm, the titan had been stalled long enough for Levi to close within a dozen paces of his horse. Yet the soldier's sacrifice had been in vain… Levi already knew that he would never make it to that saddle.

The titan coiled like some grotesque monster of a cat before lunging at him once again. For the third time, he ran to one side and prepared to dive, his heart sinking as he gripped with the realization that this truly was the end. Today was the day after all.

His comrades had always assumed that he, Levi, felt neither fear nor anger. Hardly. In the moment before he was about to die, Levi felt the same terror and helpless rage that any other doomed human came to know in their final moments. In his entire life, however, Levi had subconsciously refused to ever show weakness, to ever give an opponent the satisfaction of seeing any trace of fear in his expression, and so only his eyes widened, his face still set in its grim snarl as he realized that his evasive leap this time would be too short to escape from the titan's yawning, bloody mouth.

He braced for immeasurable pain and an oblivion that never came.

Instead, his ears suddenly recognized the familiar _snap-hiss_ of maneuver gear wires being fired. Two 3DMG anchors flew over his prostrate body, glinting in the sun as they were propelled by gas straight into the titan's eyes.

A shout, primal and female, pierced the air as a woman with short blonde hair soared over Levi's head. The cloak of the Scouting Legion whipped behind her as the soldier reeled her wires in sharply, catapulting herself like a cannonball into the surprised monster's face. Her two blades followed her anchors, stabbing deep into the titan's eye sockets and unleashing twin eruptions of blood and viscous fluid.

For a split second, Levi was slow to react for once—so great was his shock at the unexpected salvation.

The sight of the female scout detaching her blades, leaving them buried deep in the titan's skull, and somersaulting away from its wild bite reignited Levi's combat instincts, and in the next moment, his own blades were shining in his hands as he fired his maneuver gear into the side of the titan's head. A heartbeat later, Levi stood on the titan's heaving back, feet planted between its shoulder blades as it thrashed wildly, blind yet still unstoppably ravenous.

Levi had neither the time nor the inclination for finesse. He hacked downwards and diagonally with his right blade, pulled it loose from the titan's steaming neck, and delivered a cruel chop with the sword in his left hand that cleaved the cut of flesh completely free as the titan struggled in vain. Instantly, the aberrant sagged, its corpse limp. Just to be certain, he delivered a swift kick to the titan's nape, dislodging the slice of fat and muscle and sending it flopping end over end across the dusty ground.

From somewhere, it seemed his body had discovered a hidden reserve of adrenaline. Residual tingles continued to surge through his neck, cheeks, and arms as Levi stepped stiffly from the fallen aberrant's back.

Nanaba was straightening, new swords slotted into her hilts. Her hands and arms, utterly drenched in crimson titan blood, steamed as though afire. The heat from the giant's wounds must have scalded her fingers painfully raw, yet her face did not betray the slightest sign of discomfort.

Levi faced her and gave her a small nod. "That was extraordinary, Nanaba."

"Thank you, Levi," she replied, her seemingly eternally glum eyes scanning his dirt-caked uniform briefly for signs of injury. "It was my pleasure. Are you hurt?"

The sound of hoof beats led the two of them to turn. Two fellow scouts on horseback were approaching, leading two more riderless horses, one of them Levi's black-coated mare.

Levi recognized the tall, bearded Scouting Legion veteran Mike Zacharius first. Mike had been an experienced scout and soldier since long before Levi had first ventured beyond the walls. The grim, tired resignation that had darkened the face of the most battle-hardened member of the entire human military bore testament to the magnitude of the battle's toll. Levi noticed that just one set of reserve blades remained in the sockets at Mike's hip. Behind Mike rode Commander Keith Shadis, his head bandaged, a thin trail of blood running down one side of his frowning face. The commander's fiery ardor had burned out, replaced instead by an expression of numb resolve. The two of them maneuvered their horses deftly through the throng of foot soldiers alongside Levi and Nanaba, and Mike wordlessly reached down to hand Levi the reins to his mount.

As he climbed onto horseback, Levi became aware that the fighting in the immediate vicinity had calmed. The nearest titan strolled across the plains well over six hundred meters away. Yet even as Levi watched it stride mindlessly over the meadow, he could still hear the shrill screams carried to them across the air from some other corner of the battlefield. The company of nearby spearmen was gathering around them, approaching the four scouts as though drawn by a promise of safety. Only the soldiers on the edges of the crowd continued facing outwards, their spears pointed uneasily towards the distant silhouettes against the sky.

Keith Shadis cleared his throat, watching the crowd out of the corner of his eye as Nanaba swung into her own saddle. "Levi, are you low on gas?"

"I have half."

Levi had replied without looking. He too was glancing at the forlorn band of infantrymen that surrounded them.

The closest citizen-soldiers had formed a ragged semicircle around the four members of the Scouting Legion. Each gripped his or her spear, but apart from sharing this pathetic armament, every man and woman seemed to stand out starkly from the rest. A copper-haired woman slouched, her sleeves red with blood, eyes immobile and unfocused. A tradesman still wore his old leather apron. His hands shook, and he had thrust the butt of his pike into the ground as though to steady himself. Some faces returned Levi's gaze without blinking, some stared forward indifferently, as though fixated on the coat of his horse, and others flinched at the sounds of the ongoing battle, their heads turning constantly from side, necks craning as they searched with wide eyes for signs of danger. Each face revealed a difference balance of fear and determination, foolish hope and fatalism—a hundred expressions, a hundred unique portraits of humanity.

The commander looked away from the watching ranks of spearmen and let out a sigh. He clenched his set of reins tightly as he barked. "Stay close to me. We're regrouping." Levi perceived a tone of conviction in Keith Shadis's voice and frowned. So the commander intended to take the initiative? Were they deviating from the original battle plan?

"What's the situation like?" Levi asked guardedly.

"The army is in complete disarray. The soldiers with maneuver gear are spread out too thinly, and the spearmen don't stand a chance against the titans alone." Commander Shadis pulled his horse into a quarter turn as he declared, "The four of us will ride along the edge of the battle to rally and reorganize the regular soldiers and reestablish the protective perimeter. Once we gather a sufficient force, we will need to clear a path to allow the army to resume the march."

"Are you insane!?"

Startled, the four of them turned as one towards the source of the outburst. The sudden shout had originated from one of the men standing nearby, a thin youth with wild eyes. "Half the army is already dead—why aren't we falling back to the wall?"

"They're just running and leaving us here to die!" cried another.

Looking back at the crowd, Levi saw hurt, anger, hate, betrayal written across dozens of faces. Forsaken by the walls that they had trusted to protect them, forsaken by their own government and forced to throw their lives into this desperate gamble to retake Wall Maria, these unwilling conscripts now saw themselves just as cruelly forsaken by the soldiers that had sworn to protect them.

The accusation had spurred Commander Shadis to nudge his horse forward, between the spearmen and the three other scouts. Animated by fresh fire, he insisted loudly, "Hear this—the Scouting Legion will not abandon those it has sworn to protect!"

Seized by a resurgence of the ferocity with which he had performed the same gesture at the expedition's commencement, the commander drew one of his 3DMG blades and held it high as he declared, "Many of our comrades have fallen trying to protect you from the titans. We ride now with the same unyielding dedication! Our forces will intercept the enemy in the open, so that the main force can march once again!"

The copper-haired woman snapped out of her reverie and let out a harsh laugh. "What's the use? Don't pretend you can keep the titans away from the column!"

Keith Shadis had no response, and for a moment nothing could be heard but the constant hiss as the nearby dead titan's flesh continued to dissolve, boiling away in thick clouds of steam.

A voice from deep within the mass of spearmen called out, "It's hopeless! We can't possibly reach Shiganshima!"

Murmurs, bitter in their agreement, ran through the circle of these exhausted men and women who had been nothing but impoverished, starving refugees just a week ago.

Mike was leaning forward, placing a hand on the commander's shoulder. "Keith, we should keep moving."

Roughly, Keith Shadis shook himself free from Mike's grip. He waved his free hand at the battlefield around them and exclaimed, "Many have died, but listen to this—_we will never again have a chance like this in our lifetimes!_"

At those words, everyone looked to the commander in surprise.

Shadis continued, bellowing "This is the largest army that has ever been assembled in history! Today, we have slain more titans than humanity has managed to kill in the last hundred years combined! Before today, no human on foot had every fought this far into titan territory!"

Now, he brandished his sword at the southern horizon, where they could see yet another handful of titans walking slowly towards the embattled army. "The broken gate in Shiganshima is right there, just thirty miles onwards! We are closer to our goal than we have ever been, but if we withdraw now, humanity may never again have the strength to ever reclaim the outer wall! Thousands have died today—_their deaths cannot have been in vain!_"

The soldiers stared, their expressions cynical and disbelieving. Nor could Levi blame them. Now that the commander had reminded them all of the distance that remained—a distance that would take a day and a half's march to cover—it was obvious to everyone that sealing the gate was impossible.

Keith Shadis saw that his words had perished, swallowed by the prevailing fatalism, and his shoulders sagged. He lowered his blade until it rested lightly against his horse's flank.

Almost as though mirroring the commander, one of the soldiers in the first rank lowered himself to his knees. Whether the man had let himself fall from fatigue or despair, Levi could not tell. Levi looked back to his superior officer.

Keith Shadis. He sat in the saddle, his back and neck slack with defeat.

Levi had ridden behind him on the return trip from many a failed mission, watching the leader's shoulders rise and fall lifelessly. Levi had seen him freeze in horror and curse beneath his breath as men died uselessly in battle. He had watched the commander fly into battle with a fearsome battle yell, hacking at limbs and swerving away from fingers wider than oaks. He had been shocked once to hear the man let out a choked cry of self-loathing, breaking down and falling to his knees before of the mother of a dead soldier.

There was always a candle burning behind in the commander's window even in the darkest hour of the night. New lines were carved and etched around his eyes and mouth with each expedition. The deep frown when shopkeepers and merchants, children and old men called him a murderer, a glory-seeker… The look of confusion and frustration when the Legion's critics rained abuse on his leadership…

Was it the man's fault that he had no idea how humanity would ever achieve victory?

Seven years. Seven years Keith Shadis had served, subjecting himself repeatedly to a wheel of torture that broke him over and over… The commander was not a strong man, Levi now knew, but his superhuman ability to endure the nightmare deserved nothing but the highest respect.

A breeze swept across them as they waited, the rushing wind chilling Levi's skin where his damp uniform clung to his body. For the first time in hours, the air on the hilltop was suddenly refreshing and clear, free of the scent of death. Then the wind died, and the reek of thick blood filled Levi's lungs once more.

Keith Shadis. The man finally opened his mouth as if to speak. He stopped, then clenched his teeth and looked away, grimacing. Beneath them, their horses shifted uneasily, as though standing still now felt unfamiliar to them after spending the last few hours of frenetic combat at a constant gallop.

Nanaba simply sighed. "Where to now, commander?"

That was when they heard it—the unmistakable sound of soldiers fighting with maneuver gear in the distance.

The commander's head lifted immediately. For an instant, Keith Shadis was still, as though he was steeling himself once more for yet another plunge into a cruel hopelessness that he knew so well. Then the lines deepened around his eyes and mouth, and though his face became a desolate stone mask, his voice resonated with determination as he cried out, "Together with me!"

He raced away on horseback, blades in hand, cloak billowing out behind him as he hurtled downhill.

As Levi, Mike, and Nanaba kicked their horses into a full gallop after their commander and rode through a forest of spearpoints, some of the infantrymen called out, spitting curses and insults at their backs as the four soldiers sped onward. Yet, whether out of timidity or restraint, not one of them moved as Levi passed through the last line of soldiers and left them far behind, lost and abandoned on a bloodstained hill crowned by a shattered tree.

OOOOO

Half a kilometer away, five soldiers were swinging in arcs high above the dusty road, drawing delicate coils of spent gas propellant around the three ten-meter-class titans that they fought.

Hands, mouths, feet, and torsos stained with patches of crimson, the giants lumbered across a battlefield littered with corpses and torn limbs. Around them milled a few dozen surviving foot infantrymen, their formation hopelessly scattered. A few attended to the wounded, but most were fleeing across a meadow pockmarked with the craters of titan footprints. Other tiny figures stood their ground, dodging the greedy fingers and feet the size of wagons that threatened them.

The commander's horse was the fastest of the four, and Keith Shadis now rode six or seven horse-lengths ahead of Levi and the others as the four scouts raced through the meadow. Over trampled grass and ploughed-up earth they rode, eyes fixed intently on the battle ahead. Grimly, Levi ground his teeth as he watched the struggle, willing the fighting soldiers to hold on just a little longer…

How could the sky over such a scene of suffering be so breathtakingly beautiful? Canyonlands of cloud rose high into the air over a pure blue field, their grand grey-white columns and balconies gilded by sunlight as though afire. Against this otherworldly painting, five silhouettes danced and whirled, cloaks trailing behind them like banners.

The tallest of the soldiers flung himself gracefully into the air by one cable, hanging suspended for a heartbeat at the apex of the climb. Levi scowled as he watched the nearest titan move to take advantage of the human's mistake, swiping an outstretched hand at the soldier who was now falling in a fatal, predictable path earthwards. Mentally, Levi braced himself for the inevitable scream of terror from the soldier about to be caught in the titan's grasp. He kicked at his mare's flanks viciously, gauging the distance between himself and the man in peril even though he knew already that they would be too late.

Suddenly, the distant figure reversed his fall with a lightning-quick movement, firing both wires upwards and pulling himself upwards out of the path of the titan's arm. It had been a ruse. Blades flashed in the air as the tall soldier looped over the stunned monster's shoulder, vanishing behind its head and neck, and the spray of titan blood and flesh that followed next told Levi all he needed to know about the man's identity—that of a veteran of the Scouting Legion, beyond any doubt.

The titan reeled backwards, hitting the ground with a thunderous crash that elicited nervous snorts from Levi's horse as she galloped.

They were closer now, close enough to make out the bizarre, twisted faces the two remaining titans made as they turned in place, trying sluggishly to follow the soldiers flying circles around them. Close enough to hear fragments of the exchange of shouts and orders among the distant maneuver gear users.

The baritone of Mike's voice brought Levi's attention back to his own squad's immediate situation. "Distance to targets—300 meters!"

"Prepare to switch to 3D maneuver gear!" Keith Shadis screamed. Responding with calls of acknowledgement, Nanaba and Mike drew their weapons, their expressions tense but focused. Mike's last set of blades swung free from their sheaths with a whisper of metal. Levi neither moved nor opened his mouth; he had never bothered to put his blades away.

Up ahead, the tall soldier had re-emerged, launching himself into the air after a second titan. At this distance, Levi could now make out the man's short blond hair and distinct features. Captain Erwin Smith, second-in-command of the Scouting Legion, flew once more into battle, blades still bloody and steaming.

Emboldened by their leader's example, the other four soldiers stalked their gigantic prey with the eagerness that came with imminent victory. They attacked in staggered pairs, one flier following another at a distance. The lead partner, playing the role of bait, would draw the titan's attention with a fast, evasive dive, distracting it long enough for the second to direct an attack at the monster's neck. As Levi watched, one of the scouts—a female judging by her flowing ponytail—lunged in midair and slashed at the largest titan's nape. The blades cut too shallow, and she was forced to careen away as the titan flailed at her in retaliation.

That was when disaster struck.

The female soldier swerved away from the oncoming arm and flew directly into the gaping mouth of the second titan.

His comrades had always whispered that Levi never felt so much as a shred of grief at a comrade's passing in battle. Hardly. As the doomed soldier screamed, as Levi recognized the voice of a fellow scout, a wrenching pang gripped his heart upon the sight of blood pulsing from between the titan's lips as Nadine's body vanished forever.

A cry of shock came from the youngest soldier upon realizing what had happened, and in that instant of distraction, the youth collided with a taut wire fired by one of his fellows. Out of control, he tumbled from the sky and hit the ground—coming to rest directly beneath the descending foot of the larger titan. His own scream of pain broke the air, echoed by the horrified exclamations from those watching.

In less than six seconds, the five fighting soldiers had been reduced to three.

"150 meters…" Mike breathed, his voice heavy.

"Switch to maneuver gear." Keith Shadis ordered tersely, climbing up from his saddle until he was crouching on one knee upon his horse's back. Levi was the first to lift himself into the ready position as he, Mike, and Nanaba followed suit, planting their heels into the seats of their saddles. Hooves pounding the dirt, the four horses carried their stone-silent riders into the fray.

OOOOO

In those few seconds remaining before they rode close enough to engage the titans, the ground changed from green to brown-red, and the hummocks of soft grass became choked with human bodies and parts of bodies. In that same moment, they plunged into the long shadows of the terrifying foe. Bubbling fear eating away at his stomach, Levi looked away and upwards at their targets and clenched his swords, suppressing the part of him that wondered how his own corpse would look sprawled like a doll upon this blood-soaked field.

Above them suddenly exploded a shrill yell, raw and full of rage, its power and anguish seeming to embody the collective grief of humanity that day. Her voice still ringing with the drawn-out cry, the soldier responsible was shooting skywards at incredible speed, bearing down upon the titan that had devoured her friend. Emerging from the titan's shadow into the sun, the woman's tear-stained cheeks blazed brightly with reflected light. A battle scream of vengeance still erupting from her bared teeth, Hanji Zoë was flying at her nemesis without any thought of self-preservation.

Keith Shadis had ridden within maneuver gear range, and he shouted a warning, leaping at once into the air to join the battle, yet his booming voice failed to overcome the force of Hanji's yell as she hurtled towards striking distance. The second titan was turning to meet her, its cruel arm already extending.

Ahead, Hanji charged.

As the commander raced after her, climbing to the height of the titan's hip, a second shadow loomed over the embattled soldiers of the Scouting Legion, accompanied by the earth-shaking thud of massive footsteps. The larger titan had rejoined the melee.

Levi's eyes narrowed. Not just out of fear—but because the giant had stepped within reach of his anchors.

Instantly, he was leaping upwards, firing a grapple from his left side into the tall titan. Air rushed past him as he gained speed, its resisting force a gale in opposition to his flight. As he rose, Levi quickly adopted his unconventional fighting form. He reversed his grip on the hilt sitting in his right hand, spinning the blade until it trailed behind him, thrusting his ring and little finger into the trigger guards. Behind him, Levi could hear Mike and Nanaba ascending into the air as well, their wires shooting upwards past him.

The three of them ignored the larger titan, using it as an anchor point as they sped after Hanji and the commander. On the large titan's other side, Captain Erwin rose into view side-by-side with the other surviving soldier. All their thoughts were the same—if they were lucky, they might be in the position to save Hanji if the worst came to pass.

In unison, they released their anchors and shot new wires into the flesh of Hanji's target.

Hanji's next move was half-genius, half-insanity.

Instead of moving to avoid the oncoming threat, she fired her anchors directly into the titan's hand and forearm. Suddenly, Hanji became a dizzying blur as she spun and rolled like a child's toy around the outstretched limb. The titan's eyes spun in their sockets almost comically as it attempted to track her movement.

Two metallic clinks announced to everyone within earshot that Hanji had disengaged her anchors. With a fresh cry of fury, she dove, firing an anchor into the giant's armpit. Like a slingshot, she whipped underneath the gargantuan arm above her and flew towards the clouds, spinning, her hair and cloak wild.

In its last moments, with Hanji now out of its sight, the titan had just enough time to turn towards Levi and the others with a hungry grin. They moved to dodge the hands that swung lazily at them.

With a final shout, Hanji struck.

Light faded in the titan's eyes, and it collapsed like a colossal marionette. Immediately, Levi felt his stomach drop as its body tugged his wire earthwards in its fall, and he maneuvered rapidly around its bulk to avoid being trapped beneath. The ground rose up below them, and as the dead colossus met the earth in a crash, the seven soldiers of the Scouting Legion attached to its body landed roughly around it. The impact was hard and jarring.

The cloud of dust, an opaque, tan curtain, billowed around Levi, surrounding him as he climbed to his feet. All sight and sound seemed to fade as the sandstorm raged around him until he could neither hear the shouts of fellow soldiers around him, nor see the grass at his own feet. For a minute, cut off from the living world by the storm of sand and particles, Levi half-wondered if he had just died without realizing it. An afterlife filled with floating, swirling dust and phantom-like shadows seemed somehow fitting.

Then he heard the sound of battle orders once more—the commander's and Captain Erwin's—ringing clearly over the whispering rustle as the cloud of dirt began to settle.

He became aware again of the foot soldiers running away past him, first as silhouettes, then as impressions of faces and colored cloth. Their panicked babbling and gestures were incomprehensible to him as they passed, their heads staring at him as though dumbfounded. Levi straightened. Slowly, his vision cleared, and the dust thinned to reveal none other than the intimidating sight of the last titan towering above him as it approached in a shuffling walk. Behind it, some of the other soldiers were already in the air again, angling towards its neck.

Strangely, he felt no sense of danger, no driving instinctive impulse to run or act. Instead, Levi started forward absent-mindedly, clambering with hands and knees over the fallen arm of the freshly killed titan in front of him. The heat of its decaying flesh threatened to sear his bare palms as he made his way down the other side.

Slowly, as the reverberations of the approaching footsteps intensified, Levi became more and more aware of a pained moaning that appeared to be emanating from the battlefield just in front of him.

A dozen or so feet away lay a cluster of human dead, some of them mashed flat inside the depression left by a titan's footprint.

Then he saw one of the corpses stir.

He stared. The young soldier that had been trampled earlier beneath the titan's heel was still alive.

The soldier's face, gray with imminent death, lined with unimaginable pain, and damp with tears, was wholly unfamiliar to him. The youth's body, however, had been crushed from the lower torso down, leaving nothing but a horrifying ruin that caused a wave of nausea to seize Levi's midsection with just a single glance.

Ignoring the looming titan beyond the dying boy, Levi wondered at what he was doing as he approached. His head felt light-headed and strange, and though a part of him was furious at his own sleepy inaction, Levi simply no longer felt any impulse to fight or to run. Rather, he continued walking forwards, step by step, until he stood at the far edge of the patch of bodies. His thoughts whirled as though struggling against captive chains. Had he been dazed in the fall to the ground? Had his fatigue finally caught up with him, or had he perhaps lost all grip on his mind? The Levi he knew ought to be in the air fighting alongside the others to slay the large titan, not stumbling about aimlessly on the ground.

Indeed, Levi's muscles felt perfectly poised even despite their soreness, fully prepared for the resumption of combat… yet it was his mind that could no longer supply the energy to lift one sword, much less command his body to throw itself once more into what was unquestionably a hopeless battle.

Onwards came the titan.

The crushed soldier turned in his agony towards the oncoming giant. At the sight of the titan bending down above him, ignorant of the soldiers swarming around its head like wasps, the boy let out a groan of disbelief as though helplessly amazed at his own misfortune. Wincing in pain, he closed his eyes and rested his head against the dark, bloody earth in seeming acceptance of his fate. But, as the titan extended its fingers and seized him by the cloak and shoulder, the soldier's sigh turned into a plaintive scream.

"Sina! Please… no! Gods… Please! Help!"

The youth's arms struggled weakly. Even a doomed man, it seemed, fought against oblivion to the very end, hoping stubbornly for salvation even in the face of the irrefutable knowledge that he was dying.

Yet, in defiance of every ounce of logic and compassion in his body, Levi did nothing. He stood. He watched, even as the boy's eyes found him and fixed on him in desperation, pupils wide and pleading. Though the soldier's face was as pale as a corpse's, his eyes still blazed with life's full fury.

"Stop it! Someone help!"

Suddenly, someone raced past Levi, bounding across the broken ground. He spun to see a head of brown-grey hair, a green scarf, a back clothed in an earth-colored coat as an old man sprinted past Levi's immobile body towards the panicked yells. The man dashed forward with surprising speed, brandishing his pike as the youth left the ground to dangle from the titan's fingers. The weapon's point, Levi noticed, was already stained red.

The spear flew forward in a thrust, accompanied by a hoarse shout from its wielder. But instead of stabbing at the giant hand holding the soldier captive, the spearman chose a different target. Lunging forward, he plunged his pike deep into the mortally wounded soldier's neck.

Surprise briefly lit up the youth's eyes before they glazed over forever, and the boy's limbs went limp as blood cascaded down his uniform. Instantly, the stooping titan lost interest, releasing the cadaver from its fingertips as it turned its ugly head to look towards Levi and the foot soldier.

Ahead, the spearman freed his weapon from the boy's corpse and backpedaled away from the giant he had just robbed of a meal.

Levi's surprise at what he had just witnessed returned a semblance of activity to his physical body. As the titan reached for him and the old man with bloody fingers, Levi finally found the spark of life required to jerk his legs into motion, stumble backwards, and escape. The five fat digits closed, grasping nothing but air.

In the sky behind the titan's head, a shadow wielding twin blades appeared.

Mike Zacharius's fighting technique was anything but graceful. His physique ill-suited for acrobatics, the soldier preferred crude, carefully timed diving attacks, hacking brutally with a butcher's artlessness at the necks of his targets.

Mike dropped like a stone, using his height and size to throw his full weight behind the force of his blades as he aimed two cleaving blows. Levi did not see the cuts, but the sound of blades tearing messily through ligaments and tissue was unmistakable. Blood and flesh erupted from the bending titan's nape, and it crumpled forwards, driving into the ground and plowing the soil before it into a small ridge.

Pieces of the titan's neck were still spinning through the air to the ground from the sheer energy of Mike's attack as the remaining soldiers of the Scouting Legion landed on the grass around them.

Erwin. Commander Keith Shadis. Hanji. Mike Zacharius. Nanaba. They straightened from their return to the earth, then approached one by one to gather around Levi. The last soldier—a new recruit that Levi only recognized by sight—hit the ground awkwardly and stumbled before wearily joining the rest of them. As the old spearman walked away to join the handful of other foot soldiers nearby, the scouts gathered in a small band of their own.

Vacant expressions. Eyes that burned with an intense fatalism. Torn, bloodstained cloaks. Dull, chipped blades. Across the small circle, Erwin mechanically raised an arm to wipe sweat and grime from his face. Beside him, Nanaba's hands were shaking, causing the hilts of her lowered swords to rattle softly. Mike did not meet anyone's eyes as he raised his head and whistled, calling their horses back to them.

Hanji joined the group, brushing a hand gently against Mike's arm so that he stepped aside to make room. As she took her place, Hanji glanced at the tall veteran's expression, then frowned. Her own face, Levi noticed, was frozen in lingering shock.

"Do they smell different once they're dead, Mike?" she asked. Her voice was raspy.

"They do."

"Do they really?" Hanji mused. "How strange…"

Their horses cantered up to the small group, then slowed as each animal sought its respective soldier. Levi's mare found him and snorted hot air on the back of his neck as it sniffed at his hair worriedly. Further away, however, two other horses were pacing back and forth, tossing their heads in consternation at their inability to find their former riders.

Keith Shadis chose that moment to glare at Levi. "You! What in heaven were you doing just now, standing around like that?" Raising his voice, he gestured back over his shoulder at the defeated titan and continued, "How—why were you just sitting there, watching a brother get eaten by a titan in front of your very eyes!?"

Levi exhaled, returning the commander's glare with a tired stare of his own.

He had no reply. How could he? What had just happened not only defied his ability to explain, but genuinely frightened him to the core. In that moment of inaction, Levi had felt as though he had suddenly discovered the true limit of his endurance, only to realize too late that he had already far exceeded it. His fanatic will to fight against all odds, a quality honed and strengthened over a lifetime of brutal struggle, had been replaced without warning by a powerful mental exhaustion so overwhelming that it had left him virtually paralyzed. Now, Levi could feel his mind, arms, and legs responding to his will once more, but would it last?

Captain Erwin must have seen and recognized something in Levi's stare, because he caught Keith Shadis's eye and gave the commander the tiniest shake of his head.

Keith Shadis sighed, looking from Erwin to Levi then back to Erwin again, and the intensity of his glowering expression dissipated slightly. He paused, then rounded on Hanji.

"And you! Hanji! Explain yourself. What were you thinking, attacking that titan like that? You were lucky not to end up killed!"

"I was killing titans," Hanji spat sullenly, then added, "and avenging the death of a fellow comrade." At this, Hanji's air of simmering resentment suddenly fell away, and she broke down where she stood as tears fell from her eyes. For a moment, they stood there without speaking as Hanji sobbed quietly, a combination of grief and helpless hatred written across her features.

Mike's eyes were just as dull and lifeless, and he appeared lost in his own thoughts. He and Nadine had come from the same village in the Wall Maria territory.

Hanji turned away from the rest of them to look at the titan she killed, and Levi followed her gaze.

As he looked too at the bloodstained mouth of the titan that had swallowed Nadine, he grappled vainly with the realization that yet another familiar soul had been erased from the world he knew.

He was no stranger to loss. Countless faces from his childhood and military service lived now only as faint recollections in his mind, their images both intimate and painful to the memory. Yet with every fresh death, it seemed that Levi still had not learned to harden himself to the grief. A strange trauma always accompanied the struggle of accepting that someone he had known, however distantly, was now gone forever.

Nadine's beaming smile at the dining table in the Scouting Legion barracks was now another image of the past, never again to be a part of her future or theirs.

How many fellow scouts had already died in this monumental battle, never to return even as wrapped corpses to the safety of the walls? How many other comrades now existed only as memories, their dreams and quirks in life extinguished? Would any of those still alive today, ultimately, survive this slaughter?

"Nadine and Albert are dead, along with the two soldiers from the Garrison," Erwin was reporting to the commander, his voice trembling slightly as he said the names. "One of the trainees is dead, another went missing an hour ago, and as for the last trainee—Arthur…" Erwin looked to the half-flattened corpse, saw what he needed to, and concluded slowly, "…dead as well."

At this, Levi looked to the elderly spearman standing a short distance away. Their eyes met, and both understood that what the older man had done required no explanation or justification. The simple foot soldier turned away, a distant look in his eyes as he looked over one shoulder back towards the north.

Keith grimaced, then said to Erwin, "It's a superhuman feat that you managed to keep that much of your squad alive as long as you did."

Erwin flinched at the commander's words, and it was clear to Levi that the captain did not consider his preservation of three survivors from his squad's original strength of ten as an achievement of leadership.

The commander then turned to the recruit standing beside Erwin and gave the young soldier a nod. "You're learning quickly, Erd Gin."

The blond-haired young man looked queasy as he acknowledged the praise. Levi looked over the new scout briefly with an evaluating eye. Legs steady. Eyes fearful but focused. Uniform sleeves brown with dried titan blood. Two sets of reserve blades remaining.

Most of his fellow new scouts had likely already paid the ultimate price for their choice of branch, dying between sets of titan teeth or falling, broken, to lie in their new cloaks upon the meadow. That Erd had survived up to this point, even accounting for a handful of titan kills, suggested that he possessed uncommon potential as a soldier.

Levi wanted to shake his head at the waste of life. Never before had so much been demanded from a new class of Scouting Legion recruits on their very first expedition.

At his feet, a dandelion in bloom poked up from between the thick grass. He nudged the plant with the toe of his boot, sending a breath of fluffy seeds drifting across the trampled nightmare of a battlefield.

Abruptly, Mike's head shot up. "Titans. More than three, coming from the west."

That was when they felt it—the faint vibrations beneath their feet that they had overlooked until Mike's warning had alerted them.

"Onto horseback! Now!" Keith Shadis ordered.

They sheathed their blades hurriedly, their hands scrambling to seize bridles and reins.

Over the nervous neighs of their horses, they became aware of the pounding of titan footsteps in the distance. Out of the corner of his eye, Levi finally saw them.

Five. Five titans were descending from the crest of the hill on the road ahead. Running in the lead came a thirteen-meter-class aberrant. Wildly flailing its limbs, it hurtled towards them across the plain at a frightening rate. Levi, his heart jumping almost painfully inside his chest, gauged the distance as less than five hundred meters.

The aberrant was approaching rapidly as Erd and Erwin, the last to reach their horses, climbed into their saddles. Those already mounted reached for their hips, drawing their swords once more as the titans thundered towards them. Rapidly, the commander barked orders, and they separated into two squads of four and three soldiers. Levi, Mike, and Keith Shadis were just pulling their horses to one side when a shout came from a nearby spearman.

"Look! More of them!"

Levi turned, and his insides froze. Three more titans were emerging from behind the hill, all eight meters or taller. The seven scouts stared for several seconds, each privately realizing to their horror that to face no less than eight titans, one of them an aberrant, was nothing short of a capital sentence.

Glancing from the threat on the horizon to Nanaba's gloomy eyes, to Erd's pale, white face, to Keith and Erwin's cold expressions of resignation, Levi wondered glumly which of them would be the last to die. Then, with the drumbeat of the nearest titans growing louder by the second, Levi swung his horse around to face the enemy and mechanically cleared his mind in anticipation of the combat about to erupt around them.

Patiently, the seven soldiers of the Scouting Legion awaited their fate. Two hundred meters. One hundred meters.

"Leave the first to me,"

The commander turned to look at Mike Zacharius in surprise. Mike's expression was dark and unreadable. His eyes fixed intently on the lead titan, he did not blink.

Then, Keith nodded.

Without another word, the veteran soldier lifted his blades, tensed, and leapt into the air.

The tall scout rose to meet the oncoming aberrant.

OOOOO

That had been the last moment that Levi had remembered with complete clarity.

The fierce battle had taken place in his mind as an indistinct blur of sound and fury; surrounded by death, he had fought on pure instinct and primal cunning.

The jolt as his maneuver gear pulled him in a new direction, the tugging feeling as his blades carved through flesh—combat had become a haze, a storm of senses and swirling fear. He recalled the horrid stench of a titan's breath as teeth had closed in midair just inches from his head. The impact of warm droplets on his face as he'd flown through sprays of titan blood. He could still hear their battle cries—Keith's, howling and inarticulate. Nanaba's, defiant and desperate. Erd's, an involuntary screech that was the product of his own terror.

A handful of images stood out—Mike, completely decapitating a five-meter-class titan, one blade snapping as it passed through the other side of the titan's neck. He remembered Erwin tackling Hanji out of the sky, throwing them both clear of a swinging arm the size of a small bridge. He remembered the stab of pity he'd felt as he'd watched their horses scrambling to avoid titan feet, some of them vanishing beneath blundering toes in fountains of blood.

Shouts, orders. He had followed Hanji, then Mike, then Erwin as they attacked titans in pairs. He had landed amid the fighting alongside the commander, who had thrust pairs of spare blades into his hands with such urgency that Levi's palms had been lacerated by the sharp steel. Titans had fallen, only to be replaced by fresh foes as the carnage attracted more of the mindless giants. The forty-odd foot soldiers scattered across the ground had died violently almost to a man, completely at the mercy of teeth, hands and feet. Screams, the crunch of human bone.

Fly upwards. Maneuver. Dodge. Strike. Escape. Land. Repeat. He'd spun, rolled, looped, slashed, killed, wondering all the time when the end would finally come.

Then the fog of war had cleared, and he'd looked away from a falling titan to realize to his shock that he could not find another target. Around them lay sprawled a mess of mammoth limbs and torsos that protruded against the horizon like small hills. He'd descended to the ground, his head turning with wide eyes as he surveyed a battlefield covered with columns of rising steam that marked where titan corpses lay. Overcome with fatigue, he'd fallen to one knee. The earth was now still, the air now silent save for the moans and cries of the wounded and dying.

The seven of them had slain thirteen titans of all sizes. Without losing a single scout.

Now, they walked dazedly amidst the slain monsters to find their horses, their heads dizzy from lingering vertigo, their arms and legs sluggish and heavy, their gas canisters worryingly light at their hip.

The half-dozen or so remaining spearmen moved with more energy, but the expressions of these foot soldiers was terrible to see. Their stares spoke of the untold nightmare they had survived, and of their fatalistic knowledge that their own turn to die would soon come. Any dream among them that they might live to see the sunset had been mercilessly annihilated just as surely and brutally as the unlucky ranks upon ranks upon ranks of their fellow refugee-soldiers. They propped themselves up by their useless spears, with one of them—a young woman—still clutching an intact banner bearing the Legion's arms. Cynical, traumatized—the look in their eyes was almost a plea that the end be quick and painless. Their bodies, however, continued to perform the motions of life, preparing for the next hopeless skirmish.

Leading his black mare by the bridle, Levi navigated his way past the huge aberrant that Mike had eliminated at the start of the battle. The titan's limbs and body were thin, but its belly bulged, swollen and distended, and Levi shuddered as he imagined the horrors that lay inside. How many casualties was this aberrant responsible for? How many human bodies packed the space within, pressing against the stomach's lining? As he passed its lifeless head, a petty part of him considered kicking a foot into the beast's vacant, milky eyes, but he held back.

Revenge against a titan brought no satisfaction, no release. Titans did not fear death. They perished still grinning or grimacing stupidly, unrepentant of the despair and grief they inspired.

Next, he came across Hanji and Erwin. The two scouts stood side by side, looking down mutely at the human corpse at their feet. Levi noticed first that the dead body lacked an arm, and that the crimson soil surrounding it suggested that the soldier had been lost the limb and survived only to bleed to death where he lay. The next thing Levi perceived was the deceased man's face—his age, his beard.

The old refugee's eyes were wide open, as though he'd been fighting to stay alive right up until the moment of his passing. The blood-saturated scarf lying nearby, its folds bunched to form a makeshift dressing, attested as well to how strong the dead man's will to survive had been. His lips were parted slightly, as though he was still trying to whisper something. A few flies were already starting to gather, congregating with insensitive buzzes where flesh lay exposed or where blood pooled the thickest.

As he walked up to Erwin's side, Levi caught a glimpse of something shiny in Hanji's upturned palm. A small metal locket.

Feeling Levi's questioning glance, Hanji spoke without looking up. "He gave it to me just now. All he said was 'please… give this… this was his mother's…'."

Erwin finally looked away, but Levi stared

He was no stranger to death. Even so, Levi had always pitied the dead for as long as he could remember. Looking down at that lifeless childhood friend, he had thought numbly that not long ago, this being had laughed and wept, beamed in joy and frowned in anger. It had smiled at cherished memories. It had sought out the comforts of habit as well as welcoming life's occasional enjoyments. It had befriended many, hating some with secret guilt while loving others desperately with genuine passion. It too, had been loved in turn, resented in turn. It had been born once upon a time, growing into the flower of youth before it would have receded again with the years of mounting age. It had dreamt and feared and thought and felt. Its soul had been filled with regret over past mistakes and lost opportunities, worry over the little misfortunes that were the price of life. Ultimately, it had lost, and suffered… but it had lived.

Each corpse was a monument.

OOOOO

Beneath the flowing banners, cloaked in the shadows of hundreds upon hundreds of titans, the Legion of the Year 846 was now dying. Two hundred and fifty thousand humans were being slowly exterminated, their resistance disorganized and ineffectual.

From the beginning, the plan had never been intended to succeed. The whole force had been equipped with just four thousand horses and four thousand sets of maneuver gear—just enough to outfit the trained soldiers. The rest of the army wielded only crude long pikes and banners—not a single cannon or flintlock rifle. It had been clear to even the most dim-witted of the trainees that the operation had been designed to fail; the central government, for its part, had barely bothered with even the pretense of providing the army with the equipment and supplies it needed to have any hope of success. Even the provision of each soldier with the uniform of the Scouting Legion was merely a thinly veiled political move, saddling that unpopular branch with total responsibility for the offensive's outcome.

The trained soldiers had cheered and raised great battle cries all the same as they had gathered before the gates on the day of the expedition. It was a façade that had fooled nobody, yet duty had demanded that they act as though they were assured of the mission's success. The applauding crowd had behaved as though they believed it, the general staff had stepped forward and made glorious speeches, and the men and women manning the wall had fired cannon and signal rockets in salute. Yet as the gates had lifted, not one citizen or Garrison soldier had made eye contact with the column as it left the city, nor had the foot soldiers' eyes left the ground as they walked.

Yet as each man and woman passed beneath the gate of Wall Rose, they would look back over a shoulder for one last glimpse of Trost's main avenue and the city's tiled roofs and brick walls. A few, as they stepped into the darkness of the tunnel to the outside lands, also raised their chins to gaze up at the stern, beautiful countenance of Rose herself.

They had marched through the wall ten abreast. Over three hours passed before the entire army of two hundred and fifty thousand had completed their advance through the gate.

Now they returned.

They fell back as fast as they dared press their exhausted horses. There was no column. Instead, the survivors rode in tiny bands, spread out across the battle-scarred hills and fields. Blue smoke signals curled and dissipated in the sky above them, spreading the word to any still alive to see: this was the retreat. Far behind, the dark silhouettes followed them, pausing only to scoop at the pinpricks of soldiers fleeing hopelessly on foot.

To either side lay a horror show of destruction and bloody carnage for scenery. On the left, along the road, they passed a column of smashed carts surrounded by a thick carpet of corpses, broken pikes, and crates and sacks of supplies smashed and spilled among the bodies. In a patch of untouched grass nearby stood three abandoned horses that had wrestled free from the destroyed supply wagons. The sole living beings for hundreds of yards, they grazed unconcernedly amidst the ruin.

The scene passed behind them to be replaced by another—a hilltop absolutely brown with blood, the scene of a desperate last stand by a battalion of infantrymen. Scattered upon the slopes lay several misshapen spheres, each wide as a market stall in diameter—the regurgitated contents of titan stomachs. Each might have contained the remains of between a dozen and twenty refugee-soldiers. Some metal object, either a blade or the shiny surface of a set of maneuver gear, caught the sunlight and shone brightly where it sat on the hillside.

Erwin. Commander Keith Shadis. Hanji. Mike Zacharius. Nanaba. Erd. Levi. Propellant tanks exhausted, horses tiring, their few remaining blades dull and battered, they rode homewards in a tight formation, backs hunched, trying to ignore the ghastly sights around them. Hanji's horse had been crippled later that day, and so she rode together behind Nanaba. Erd, too, shared his saddle, having picked up a fellow soldier who had run out of gas.

They passed a medical satchel lying alone on the blood-spattered grass, several bandages littering the ground nearby. The rolls of white cloth stood out starkly against the backdrop of blood and earth.

They passed a broken maneuver gear blade stuck hilt-up in the earth. Its owner lay thirty feet away, missing her legs.

Mike's face seemed to have turned to stone, and he stared straight ahead as he rode. Enduring defeat after defeat came hard to soldiers of the Scouting Legion, and coming to terms with the deaths of close friends was harder still, but Mike alone faced the cruel, crushing knowledge that in a single day, every single human being from his hometown that he had ever known, befriended, or loved had perished together with his best, most hopeful chance of seeing his village liberated. Levi felt nothing but the most helpless, deep sympathy for the man.

Keith Shadis rode like a broken man, a ragdoll. He slumped in the saddle under the weight of his thoughts. They all knew he would be held responsible. The commander had long learned to accept his part in their defeats, but never had failure been so complete, so crushing.

The impact of their horses' hooves on the soft ground was muffled. For the first time since the peaceful, early hours of the morning march, quiet reigned.

They passed a cluster of four corpses, all of them unusually intact. Three lay peacefully side-by-side, their heads cracked open by some blunt instrument. The fourth body lay at their feet, a knife embedded in his own gut, a bloodstained wood axe discarded nearby.

They passed a dead horse, its hindquarters obliterated. The depression filled with crushed vegetation just behind it marked where a titan had fallen, killing the poor beast.

Several feet to Levi's right, Nanaba spoke.

"Is this hell?"

He turned to see Nanaba and Hanji riding alongside him. Nanaba was looking to one side, watching the landscape of death pass by.

Suddenly, a voice answered, clear and firm. Erwin, his eyes fixed straight ahead, had replied.

"This is not the end."

OOOOO

"Of the thirteen, Levi, you killed nine."

Erwin had said this as he, Levi, and Hanji had been standing over the old man's body.

Levi had not reacted, but Hanji had turned, shocked, to look at him.

Captain Erwin's eyes, like Levi's, had not moved. His brow was furrowed as though he were concentrating intently on the fallen soldier in front of them, yet it was clear that his mind was far away.

"This was a defeat," he continued, "but with it, humanity has now grown stronger."

At this, Levi raised an eyebrow as he shot a skeptical glance at the tall officer. Certainly, it was clear, they had fulfilled their true objective today—the reduction of the population within the walls to a level that their remaining resources could support. Yet such a huge force, if better equipped and employed more strategically, might have achieved far greater results. Instead, it had been wasted in a crude gesture that had resolved the population problem with the most meaningless solution possible. The human army, in its death, had slain more titans in a day than their species had managed to kill in the last century, but that hardly mattered when their foe was seemingly limitless beyond counting. Nobody, certainly, had expected that the column would come under attack by hundreds upon hundreds of the giants. Surveying the battlefield, Levi reflected bitterly that they hadn't even managed to get within sight of Shiganshima.

At that moment, Erwin turned to face Levi, and said, "Most importantly, I believe that we have discovered humanity's strongest soldier."

The captain mused aloud, "I take it that you expended your full set of reserve blades at least once during the battle. With your customary efficiency, that implies that your kill total today has likely exceeded sixty titans all told."

Their attention was diverted by the reports of two signal guns. Keith Shadis and Mike had fired green smoke canisters into the air—a rallying signal for any survivors nearby. Hanji placed a hand on her horse's neck and began guiding it towards where the commander waited. Erwin and Levi moved to follow her, directing their horses respectfully around the body as they left it behind.

Levi took the opportunity to respond to the captain's earlier comments, "I wouldn't have guessed that you could be distracted from the larger strategic picture, Erwin."

Erwin overtook Levi, walking on ahead as he countered, "What will the Legion do, Levi, now that the expedition has failed?"

Pondering the question, Levi considered all the possibilities. He looked up at the sky as they made their way towards the commander and the other scouts. High above them, the green smoke was slowly disappearing against clouds that glowed gold and orange in the late afternoon light. He watched the heavens as they moved past slowly overhead, so remote and indifferent to the apocalypse below.

There could be any number of outcomes that might unfold in the days and weeks following this calamity. A tribunal of some sort was almost guaranteed. Keith Shadis would almost certainly be forced to resign. The public outrage would be substantial, but limited—after all, the citizens of the Rose territory had never particularly cared for the refugees from the outermost wall. In the end, the Legion would make a convenient scapegoat. Why, then, was Erwin so optimistic? He might be hoping to exploit the shock of the disaster in order for the Legion to argue for more funds and resources, but that seemed dangerous and completely foolish. He could be hoping that the army's fate would change popular attitudes, igniting a desire for new, bold action. Or was Erwin contemplating an internal plot of some sort, even a challenge to the power of the citadel?

"You tell me," he finally said.

"Given the human cost of today's fighting, I predict that the conservative faction's conspiracy to harm the Scouting Legion's image by holding us responsible will backfire tremendously," asserted Erwin, looking back at Levi over his shoulder. "The people will not fail to ultimately blame the king and his cabinet for this tragedy, and so our political strength, at least for a time, shall increase."

A glint of steel in his eyes, Erwin added, "Also—we have shown the government a taste what lies in store for mankind if Wall Rose, too, is breached."

"These two factors mean that the government cannot publicly abandon the effort to recover the outer walls, as to declare the army's destruction as futile would be an admission of the murder of Wall Maria's refugee population. Thus, the Legion will live on, as it alone will lead any future effort to seal the gate."

There was more than a grain of truth in Erwin's reasoning, Levi realized. The authorities would call for the Scouting Legion's abolishment, but their intentions had been so transparent, so boldly ostentatious, that to go through with their plan would invite backlash that Erwin could easily exploit and turn against them.

"I suppose that sounds reasonable," Levi offered. "We have no other options regardless."

Erwin, like Levi, moved stiffly, wincing slightly when he put weight on one leg.

His cloak, his uniform, even his maneuver gear was covered with spattered blood and mud. The lever for detaching used blades was missing from the hilt Erwin held in his left hand, and so the captain had continued using that sword even beyond its breaking point. The steel had sheared off near the tip, and the weapon's edge was chipped all along its length. At the captain's hip, the pouch for smoke rounds was empty, as was his holster for the signal gun itself.

Erwin himself bore the mark of wear and tear from the day's fighting. His face seemed perpetually set in a deep frown, and his eyes pointedly avoided contact with the corpses that they walked past. Yet, though it was apparent that a part of Erwin wrestled with the near-total loss of his unit, another part of the man brimmed with a resolute, grim confidence.

"Our branch has been guaranteed its future. We will continue to conduct expeditions, to observe our foe, and to learn to fight it." He declared solemnly.

Levi shrugged. "I still don't see how I fit into all of this."

"Just as the government has no choice but to accept the continued existence of the Scouting Legion in order to save face, it will have no option but to laud its members, for the moment, as heroes—" Erwin explained. "—of which you will be our proudest and greatest."

Levi's immediate reaction was distaste. It had been bad enough that half of the Legion, a good part of it now dead, had looked up to him with awe. The thought that all of humanity might speak his name in admiration genuinely… frightened him.

"This day has changed everything, Levi. Soldiers will no longer be mere soldiers… the military will become a proud profession, and it will attract, among others, those hopeful few who are willing to put their lives at risk for change."

Erwin stopped, and the two of them halted a short distance from where Nanaba, Hanji, Keith, Erd, and Mike had gathered.

So, Levi was to be a symbol—no, a weapon of hope.

A sheet of clouds passed directly overhead, plunging them into a shadow. Levi's thoughts turned to the coming night, and to a superstition of the streets that had been passed down from generations of young beggars and thieves to the smaller children. As unfortunates that slept in the open at the mercy of the elements, they had spoken in hushed tones of the belief that, whenever a soul passed on into the world of the dead, a star would fall from the sky at dusk. Levi had never been one to stare up at the stars, but a part of him wondered if, tonight at sunset, two hundred and fifty thousand points of light would plunge like rain from the heavens.

He already knew that they would not. The skies cared nothing for the lives and deaths of mortals. The very idea that the celestial canopy wept at human suffering was just another example of mankind's stupid, unreasonable capacity to hope. They looked to the sky for validation of their own perceived self-importance, prayed to the walls as though words, not blades, would protect them, and lived from day to day as though death was but a product of the imagination. In blackest night, they cried out believing that day would come again. Above all, they would grasp at any straw, any faint promise, that could allow them to hope in the face of utter hopelessness.

Why else had two hundred and fifty thousand soldiers marched out of the southern gate at Trost that morning under the power of their own legs? Not one of them could have rationally imagined how they would seal the gates at Shiganshima, yet they had joined the army passively and without resistance, believing against all reason that maybe, just maybe, the expedition would end in success.

Suddenly dizzy, Levi placed a steadying hand against the flank of his horse. The warmth from beneath his mare's skin told him that this was no dream. A battle had indeed been fought today. Had he truly killed sixty titans? Sixty? He had no recollection of the day's chaos, but now Levi wondered what his feats had appeared like to the masses of foot soldiers below him—those masses that had dwindled to companies, then handfuls with each passing hour. Had they looked up at him in foolish hope as he felled monster after monster? Had they, even at the very end, looked to him and dreamed of an impossible victory? Caught in a titan's death grip, had they waited for him to save them?

What a price to pay for the creation of a symbol.

Not for the last time, Levi resolved never to forget. He'd made the same promise to countless others, in the streets of the slums as well as on the green plains beyond the walls. His comrades could die with the comfort that they had not died wholly in vain. However little he, Levi, was worth, a part of them lived on in his resolve, lending strength to his blades whenever he struck, lending speed to his movements whenever he flew.

Until humanity had a greater, genuine reason to hope, he would be that hope.

Humanity's greatest soldier.


End file.
